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P. 




HENRY WARD BEECHER 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



ON 



VARIOUS IMPORTANT SUBJECTS 



BY 



/ 



HENRY WARD BEECHER 







PHILADELPHIA 

HENRY ALTEMUS 
i895 



& V, 



Copyrighted 1895, by Henry Altemus. 



HBNRY ALTEMUS, MANUFACTURER, 
PHILADELPHIA. 



LYMAN BEECHER, D. D. 

To you I owe more than to any other living being. 
In childhood, you were my Parent ; in later life, my 
Teacher ; in manhood, my Companion. To your affec- 
tionate vigilance I owe my principles, my knowledge, 
and that I am a Minister of the Gospel of Christ. For 
whatever profit they derive from this little Book, the 
young will be indebted to you. 

(3) 



PREFACE 



Having watched the courses of those who seduce 
the young — their arts, their blandishments, their pre- 
tences; having witnessed the beginning and consumma- 
tion of ruin, almost in the same year, of many young 
men, naturally well disposed, whose downfall began 
with the appearances of innocence; I felt an earnest 
desire, if I could, to raise the suspicion of the young, 
and to direct their reason to the arts by which they are, 
with such facility, destroyed. 

I ask every young man who may read this book, not 
to submit his judgment to mine, not to hate because I 
denounce, nor blindly to follow me ; but to weigh my 
reasons* that he may form his own judgment. I only 
claim the place of a companion; and that I may gain 
his ear, I have sought to present truth in those forms 
which best please the young ; and though I am not 
without hope of satisfying the aged and the wise, my 
whole thought has been to carry with me the intelligent 
sympathy of YOUNG MEN. 

(5) 



CONTENTS 



LECTURE I. 

PAGE 

INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS, .... 9 

LECTURE II. 

TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY, . . . 45 

LECTURE III. 

SIX WARNINGS, ....... 77 

LECTURE IV. 

THE PORTRAIT GALLERY, IO3 

LECTURE V. 

GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING, , . . -135 

LECTURE VI. 

THE STRANGE WOMAN, . . . . .173 

LECTURE VII. 

POPULAR AMUSEMENTS, . . . . .221 

(7) 



INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS 



Give us this day our daily bread. Matt. vi. II. 

This we commanded you, that if any would not work, 
neither should he eat. For we hear that there are 
some who walk among you disorderly, working not at 
all, but are busybodies. Now them that are such we 
command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that 
with quietness they work, and eat their own bread. 
2 Thess. iii. io, 12. 



THE bread which we solicit of God, he 
gives us through our own industry. 
Prayer sows it, and Industry reaps it. 
As Industry is habitual activity in some 
useful pursuit, so, not only inactivity, but 
also all efforts without the design of useful- 
ness, are of the nature of Idleness. The 
supine sluggard is no more indolent than 
the bustling do-nothing. Men may walk 
much, and read much, and talk much, and 
pass the day without an unoccupied mo- 
ment, and yet be substantially idle ; because 
Industry requires, at least, the intention of 
usefulness. But gadding, gazing, lounging, 
mere pleasure-mongering, reading for the 

(9) 



IO LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

relief of ennui y — these are as useless as 
sleeping, or dozing, or the stupidity of a 
surfeit. 

There are many grades of idleness ; and 
veins of it run through the most industrious 
life. We shall indulge in some descriptions 
of the various classes of idlers, and leave 
the reader to judge, if he be an indolent 
man, to which class he belongs. 

I. The lazy-man. He is of a very ancient 
pedigree ; for his family is minutely de- 
scribed by Solomon : Hozv long wilt thou 
sleep, sluggard? when wilt thou azvake 
out of sleep ? This is the language of im- 
patience ; the speaker has been trying to 
awaken him — pulling, pushing, rolling him 
over, and shouting in his ear; but all to no 
purpose. He soliloquizes, whether it is 
possible for the man ever to w T ake up ! At 
length, the sleeper drawls out a dozing pe- 
tition to be let alone : " Yet a little 
sleep », a little slumber, a little folding of 
the hands to sleep ; " and the last words 
confusedly break into a snore, — that som- 
nolent lullaby of repose. Long ago the 
birds have finished their matins, the sun 
has advanced full high, the dew has gone 
from the grass, and the labors of Indus- 
try are far in progress, when our slug- 
gard, awakened by his very efforts to main- 
tain sleep, slowly emerges to perform life's 



INDUSTR Y AND IDLENESS j r 

great duty of feeding — with him, second 
only in importance to sleep. And now, 
well rested, and suitably nourished, surely 
he will abound in labor. Nay, the sluggard 
will not plough by reason of the cold. It is 
yet early spring; there is ice in the north ; 
and the winds are hearty : his tender skin 
shrinks from exposure, and he waits for 
milder days, — envying the residents of trop- 
ical climates, where cold never comes, and 
harvests wave spontaneously. He is valiant 
at sleeping and at the trencher; but for 
other courage, the slothful man saith, there 
is a lion without; I shall be slain in the street. 
He has not been out to see ; but he heard a 
noise, and resolutely betakes himself to pru- 
dence. Under so thriving a manager, so 
alert in the morning, so busy through the 
day, and so enterprising, we might antici- 
pate the thrift of his husbandry. I went by 
the field of the slothfid and by the vineyard 
of the man void of understanding ; and lo ! 
it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles 
had covered the face of it y and its stone wall 
was broken down. To complete the picture, 
only one thing more is wanted, — a descrip- 
tion of his house, — and then we should 
have, at one view, the lazy-man, his farm, 
and house. Solomon has given us that 
also : By much slothfuhzess the btiilding de- 
cay eth ; and through idleness of the hands the 



I2 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEAT 

house droppeth through. Let all this be put 
together, and possibly some reader may 
find an unpleasant resemblance to his own 
affairs. 

He sleeps long and late, he wakes to stu- 
pidity, with indolent eyes sleepily rolling 
over neglected work ; neglected because it is 
too cold in spring, and too hot in summer, 
and too laborious at all times, — a great cow- 
ard in danger, and therefore very blustering 
in safety. His lands run to waste, his fences 
are dilapidated, his crops chiefly of weeds 
and brambles ; a shattered house, the side 
leaning over as if wishing, like its owner, to 
lie down to sleep; the chimney tumbling 
down, the roof breaking in, with moss and 
grass sprouting in its crevices ; the well 
without pump or windlass, a trap for their 
children. This is the very castle of Indo- 
lence. 

2. Another idler as useless, but vastly 
more active than the last, attends closely to 
every one's business, except his own. His 
wife earns the children's bread, and his ; 
procures her own raiment and his ; she pro- 
cures the wood ; she procures the water, 
while he, with hands in his pocket, is busy 
watching the building of a neighbor's barn ; 
or advising another how to trim and train 
his vines ; or he has heard of sickness in a 
friend's family, and is there, to suggest a 



INDUSTR Y AND IDLENESS 



13 



hundred cures, and to do everything but to 
help ; he is a spectator of shooting-matches, 
a stickler for a ring and fair play at every 
fight. He knows all the stones of all the 
families that live in the town. If he can 
catch a stranger at the tavern in a rainy day, 
he pours out a strain of information, a pat- 
tering of words, as thick as the rain-drops 
out of doors. He has good advice to every- 
body; how to save, how to make money, 
how to do everything ; he can tell the sad- 
dler about his trade, he gives advice to the 
smith about his work, and goes over with 
him when it is forged to see the carriage- 
maker put it on, suggests improvements, 
advises this paint or that varnish, criticises 
the finish, or praises the trimmings. He is 
a violent reader of newspapers, almanacs, 
and receipt books; and with scraps of his- 
tory and mutilated anecdotes, he faces the 
very schoolmaster, and gives up only to the 
volubility of the oily village lawyer, — few 
have the hardihood to match him. 

And thus every day he bustles through 
his multifarious idleness, and completes his 
circle of visits, as regularly as the pointers 
of a clock visit each figure on the dial 
plate; but alas! the clock forever tells man 
the useful lesson of time passing steadily 
away, and returning never; but what useful 
thing do these busy buzzing idlers perform ? 



14 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



3. We introduce another idler. He 
follows no vocation; he only follows those 
who do. Sometimes he sweeps along the 
streets, with consequential gait ; sometimes 
perfumes it with wasted odors of tobacco. 
He also haunts sunny benches, or breezy 
piazzas. His business is to see ; his desire to 
be seen, and no one fails to see him, — so 
gaudily dressed, his hat sitting aslant upon 
a wilderness of hair, like a bird half startled 
from its nest, and every thread arranged to 
provoke attention. He is a man of honor; 
not that he keeps his word or shrinks from 
meanness. He defrauds his laundress, his 
tailor, and his landlord. He drinks and 
smokes at other men's expense. He gambles 
and swears, and fights — when he is too 
drunk to be afraid ; but still he is a man of 
honor, for he has whiskers and looks fierce, 
wears mustachios and says, " upon my honor, 
sir ; " "do you doubt my honor, sir? " 

Thus he appears by day; by night he 
does not appear ; he may be dimly seen flit- 
ting ; his voice may be heard loud in the 
carousal of some refection cellar, or above 
the songs and uproar of a midnight return, 
and home staggering. 

4. The next of this brotherhood excites 
our pity. He began life most thriftily; for 
his rising family he was gathering an ample 
subsistence ; but, involved in other men's 



INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS 



15 



affairs, he went down in their ruin. Late in 
life he begins once more, and at length, just 
secure of an easy competence, his ruin is 
compassed again. He sits down quietly un- 
der it, complains of no one, envies no one, re- 
fuseth the cup, and is even more pure in 
morals, than in better days. He moves on 
from day to day, as one who walks under a 
spell, — it is the spell of despondency, which 
nothing can disenchant or arouse. He 
neither seeks work nor refuses it. He 
wanders among men a dreaming gazer, 
poorly clad, always kind, always irresolute, 
able to plan nothing for himself, nor to ex- 
ecute what others have planned for him. 
He lives and he dies a discouraged man, 
and the most harmless and excusable of all 
idlers. 

5. I have not mentioned the fashionable 
idler, whose riches defeat every object for 
which God gave him birth. He has a fine 
form, and manly beauty, and the chief end 
of life is to display them. With notable 
diligence he ransacks the market for rare 
and curious fabrics, for costly seals, and 
chains, and rings. A coat poorly fitted is 
the unpardonable sin of his creed. He med- 
itates upon cravats, employs a profound 
discrimination in selecting a hat, or a vest, 
and adopts his conclusions upon the taste- 
fulness of a button or a collar, with the 



x 6 lectures to young men 

deliberation of a statesman. Thus capari- 
soned, he saunters in fashionable galleries, 
or flaunts in stylish equipage, or parades 
the streets with simpering belles, or delights 
their itching ears with compliments of 
flattery, or with choicely culled scandal. 
He is a reader of fictions, if they be 
not too substantial ; a writer of cards and 
billet-doux, and is especially conspicuous 
in albums. Gay and frivolous, rich and use- 
less, polished till the enamel is worn off, his 
whole life serves only to make him an ani- 
mated puppet of pleasure. He is as corrupt 
in imagination as he is refined in manners ; 
he is as selfish in private as he is generous 
in public ; and even what he gives to another, 
is given for his own sake. He worships 
where fashion worships, to-day at the 
theatre, to-morrow at the church, as either 
exhibits the whitest hand, or the most- 
polished actor. A gaudy, active and indolent 
butterfly, he flutters without industry from 
flower to flower, until summer closes, and 
frosts sting him, and he sinks down and 
dies, unthought of and unremembered. 

6. One other portrait should be drawn of 
a business man, who wishes to subsist by 
his occupation while he attends to every- 
thing else. If a sporting club goes to the 
woods, he must go. He has set his line in 
every hole in the river, and dozed in a 



INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS iy 

summer day under every tree along its 
bank. He rejoices in a riding party — a 
sleigh-ride — a summer-frolic — a winter's 
glee. He is everybody's friend — universally 
good-natured, — forever busy where it will 
do him no good, and remiss where his in- 
terests require activity. He takes amuse- 
ment for his main business, which other 
men employ as a relaxation; and the serious 
labor of life, which other men are mainly 
employed in, he knows only as a relaxation. 
After a few years he fails, his good nature 
is something clouded, and as age sobers his 
buoyancy, without repairing his profitless 
habits, he soon sinks to a lower grade of 
laziness, and to ruin. 

It would be endless to describe the wiles 
of idleness — how it creeps upon men, how 
secretly it mingles with their pursuits, how 
much time it purloins from the scholar, 
from the professional man, and from the 
artisan. It steals minutes, it clips off the 
edges of hours, and at length takes posses- 
sion of days. Where it has its will, it sinks 
and drowns employment; but where ne- 
cessity, or ambition, or duty resists such 
violence, then indolence makes labor heavy ; 
scatters the attention ; puts us to our tasks 
with wandering thoughts, with irresolute 
purpose, and with dreamy visions. Thus 
when it may, it plucks out hours and rules 

2 



j 8 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

over them ; and where this may not be, it 
lurks around them to impede the sway of 
industry, and turn her seeming toils to 
subtle idleness. Against so mischievous an 
enchantress, we should be duly armed. I 
shall, therefore, describe the advantage of 
Industry, and the evils of Indolence. 

I. A hearty Industry promotes happi- 
ness. Some men of the greatest industry 
are unhappy from infelicity of disposition ; 
they are morose, or suspicious, or envious. 
Such qualities make happiness impossible 
under any circumstances. 

Health is the platform on which all hap- 
piness must be built. Good appetite, good 
digestion, and good sleep, are the elements 
of health, and Industry confers them. As 
use polishes metals, so labor the faculties, 
until the body performs its unimpeded 
functions with elastic cheerfulness and 
hearty enjoyment. 

Buoyant spirits are an element of happi- 
ness, and activity produces them ; but they 
fly away from sluggishness, as fixed air 
from open wine. Men's spirits are like 
water, which sparkles when it runs, but 
stagnates in still pools, and is mantled with 
green, and breeds corruption and filth. The 
applause of conscience, the self-respect of 
pride, the consciousness of independence, 
a manly joy of usefulness, the consent of 



INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS 



19 



every faculty of the mind to one's occupa- 
tion, and their gratification in it — these con- 
stitute a happiness superior to the fever- 
flashes of vice in its brightest moments. 
After an experience of ages, which has 
taught nothing from this, men should have 
learned, that satisfaction is not the product 
of excess, or of indolence, or of riches ; but 
of industry, temperance, and usefulness. 
Every village has instances which ought to 
teach young men, that he, who goes aside 
from the simplicity of nature, and the 
purity of virtue, to wallow 7 in excesses, 
carousals, and surfeits, at length misses the 
errand of his life; and sinking with 
shattered body prematurely to a dishonored 
grave, mourns that he mistook exhilaration 
for satisfaction, and abandoned the very 
home of happiness, when he forsook the 
labors of useful Industry. 

The poor man with Industry, is happier 
than the rich man in Idleness ; for labor 
makes the one more manly, and riches un- 
mans the other. The slave is often happier 
than the master, who is nearer undone by 
license than his vassal by toil. Luxurious 
couches — plushy carpets from oriental 
looms — pillows of eider-down — carriages 
contrived with cushions and springs to 
make motion imperceptible, — is the indo- 
lent master of these as happy as the slave 



2o LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

that wove the carpet, the Indian who hunted 
the northern flock, or the servant who 
drives the pampered steeds ? Let those who 
envy the gay revels of city idlers, and pine 
for their masquerades, their routs, and their 
operas, experience for a week the lassitude 
of their satiety, the unarousable torpor of 
their life when not under a fiery stimulus, 
their desperate ennui y and restless somno- 
lency, they would gladly flee from their 
haunts as from a land of cursed enchant- 
ment. 

2. Industry is the parent of thrift. In 
the over-burdened states of Europe, the 
severest toil often only suffices to make 
life a wretched vacillation between food and 
famine ; but in America, Industry is pros- 
perity. 

Although God has stored the world with 
an endless variety of riches for man's wants, 
he has made them all accessible only to 
Industry. The food we eat, the raiment 
which covers us, the house which protects, 
must be secured by diligence. To tempt 
man yet more to Industry, every product of 
the earth has a susceptibility of improve- 
ment; so that man not only obtains the 
gifts of nature at the price of labor, but 
these gifts become more precious as we be- 
stow upon them greater skill and cultiva- 
tion. The wheat and maize which crown 



INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS 2I 

our ample fields, were food fit but for birds, 
before man perfected them by labor. The 
fruits of the forest and the hedge, scarcely 
tempting to the extremest hunger, after 
skill has dealt with them and transplanted 
them to the orchard and the garden, allure 
every sense with the richest colors, odors, 
and flavors. The world is full of germs 
which man is set to develop ; and there is 
scarcely an assignable limit, to which the 
hand of skill and labor may not bear the 
powers of nature. 

The scheming speculations of the last ten 
years have produced an aversion among 
the young to. the slow accumulations of 
ordinary Industry, and fired them with a 
conviction that shrewdness, cunning, and 
bold ventures, are a more manly way to 
wealth. There is a swarm of men, bred in 
the heats of adventurous times, whose 
thoughts scorn pence and farthings, and 
who humble themselves to speak of dollars ; 
— hundreds and thousands are their words. 
They are men of great operations. Forty 
thousand dollars is a moderate profit of a 
single speculation. They mean to own the 
Bank ; and to look down, before they die, 
upon Astor and Girard. The young farmer 
becomes almost ashamed to meet his 
school-mate, whose stores line whole 
streets, whose stocks are in every bank and 



22 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

company, and whose increasing money is 
already well-nigh inestimable. But if the 
butterfly derides the bee in summer, he was 
never known to do it in the lowering days 
of autumn. 

Every few years, Commerce has its earth- 
quakes, and the tall and toppling ware- 
houses which haste ran up, are first shaken 
down. The hearts of men fail them for 
fear; and the suddenly rich, made more 
suddenly poor, fill the land with their loud 
laments. But nothing strange has hap- 
pened. When the whole story of commer- 
cial disasters is told, it is only found out 
that they, who slowly amassed the gains 
of useful Industry, built upon a rock ; and 
they, who flung together the imaginary 
millions of commercial speculations, built 
upon the sand. When times grew dark, 
and the winds came, and the floods de- 
scended and beat upon them both — the 
rock sustained the one, and the shifting sand 
let down the other. If a young man has 
no higher ambition in life than riches, 
Industry — plain, rugged, brown-faced, 
homely clad, old-fashioned Industry, must 
be courted. Young men are pressed with a 
most unprofitable haste. They wish to reap 
before they have ploughed or sown. Every- 
thing is driving at such a rate, that they 
have become giddy. Laborious occupa- 



INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS 



23 



tions are avoided. Money is to be earned 
in genteel leisure, with the help of fine 
clothes, and by the soft seductions of 
smooth hair and luxuriant whiskers. 

Parents, equally wild, foster the delusion. 
Shall the promising lad be apprenticed to 
his uncle, the blacksmith ? The sisters 
think the blacksmith so very smutty ; the 
mother shrinks from the ungentility of his 
swarthy labor; the father, weighing the 
matter prudentially deeper, finds that a 
whole life had been spent in earning the 
uncle's property. These sagacious parents, 
wishing the tree to bear its fruit before it 
has 'ever blossomed, regard the long delay 
of industrious trades as a fatal objection to 
them. The son, then, must be a rich mer- 
chant, or a popular lawyer, or a broker; 
and these, only as the openings to specu- 
lation. 

Young business men are often educated 
in two very unthrifty species of contempt ; 
a contempt for small gains, and a contempt 
for hard labor. To do one's own errands, 
to wheel one's own barrow, to be seen 
with a bundle, bag, or burden, is disrepu- 
table. Men are so sharp now-a-days, that 
they can compass by their shrewd heads, 
what their fathers used to do with their 
heads and hands. 

3. Industry gives character and credit to 



24 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



the young. The reputable portions of 
society have maxims of prudence, by which 
the young are judged and admitted to their 
good opinion. Does he regard his word ? 
Is he industrious ? Is he economical ? Is he 
free front immoral habits? The answer 
which a young man's conduct gives to these 
questions, settles his reception among good 
men. Experience has shown that the 
other good qualities of veracity, frugality, 
and modesty, are apt to be associated with 
industry. A prudent man would scarcely 
be persuaded that a listless, lounging fellow, 
would be economical or trust-worthy. An 
employer would judge wisely, that where 
there was little regard for time, or for 
occupation, there would be as little, upon 
temptation, for honesty or veracity. Pilfer- 
ings of the till, and robberies, are fit deeds 
for idle clerks, and lazy apprentices. In- 
dustry and knavery are sometimes found 
associated ; but men wonder at it, as at a 
strange thing. The epithets of society, 
which betoken its experience, are all in favor 
of Industry. Thus, the terms "a hard 
working man ; " " an industrious man ; " 
" a laborious artisan ; " are employed to 
mean, an honest man ; a trust-worthy man. 

I may here, as well as anywhere, impart 
the secret of what is called good and bad 
luck. There are men who, supposing Provi- 



INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS 



25 



dence to have an implacable spite against 
them, bemoan in the poverty of a wretched 
old age the misfortunes of their lives. 
Luck forever ran against them, and for 
others. One, with a good profession, lost 
his luck in the river, where he idled away 
his time a-fishing, when he should have 
been in the office. Another, with a good 
trade, perpetually burnt up his luck by his 
hot temper, which provoked all his em- 
ployers to leave him. Another, with a 
lucrative business, lost his luck by amazing 
diligence at everything but his business. 
Another, who steadily followed his trade, 
as steadily followed his bottle. Another, 
who was honest and constant to his work, 
erred by perpetual misjudgments ; — he 
lacked discretion. Hundreds lose their 
luck by indorsing ; by sanguine specula- 
tions ; by trusting fraudulent men ; and 
by dishonest gains. A man never has 
good luck who has a bad wife. I never knew 
an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, 
careful of his earnings, and strictly honest, 
who complained of bad luck. A good 
character, good habits, and iron industry, 
are impregnable to the assaults of all the ill 
luck that fools ever dreamed of. But when 
I see a tatterdemalion, creeping out of a 
groggery late in the forenoon, with his 
hands stuck into his pockets, the rim of his 



2 6 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

hat turned up, and the crown knocked in, 
I know he has had bad luck, — for the worst 
of all luck, is to be a sluggard, a knave, or 
a tippler. 

4. Industry is a substitute for Genius. 
Where one or more faculties exist in the 
highest state of development and activity, — 
as the faculty of music in Mozart, — invention 
in Fulton, — ideality in Milton, — we call 
their possessor a genius. But a genius is 
usually understood to be a creature of such 
rare facility of mind, that he can do anything 
without labor. According to the popular 
notion, he learns without study, and knows 
without learning. He is eloquent without 
preparation ; exact without calculation ; and 
profound without reflection. While ordi- 
nary men toil for knowledge by reading, by 
comparison, and by minute research, a gen- 
ius is supposed to receive it as the mind 
receives dreams. His mind is like a vast 
cathedral, through whose colored windows 
the sunlight streams, painting the aisles with 
the varied colors of brilliant pictures. Such 
minds may exist. 

1 So far as my observations have ascer- 
tained the species, they abound in academies, 
colleges, and Thespian societies ; in village 
debating clubs ; in coteries of young artists, 
and among young professional aspirants. 
They are to be known by a reserved air, ex- 



INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS 



27 



cessive sensitiveness, and utter indolence ; 
by very long hair, and very open shirt col- 
lars; by the reading of much wretched poe- 
try, and the writing of much, yet more 
wretched ; by being very conceited, very 
affected, very disagreeable, and very use- 
less : — beings whom no man wants for friend, 
pupil, or companion. 

The occupations of the great man, and of 
the common man, are necessarily, for the 
most part, the same ; for the business of life 
is made up of minute affairs, requiring only 
judgment and diligence. A high order of 
intellect is required for the discovery and 
defence of truth ; but this is an unfrequent 
task. Where the ordinary wants of life 
once require recondite principles, they will 
need the application of familiar truths a 
thousand times. Those who enlarge the 
bounds of knowledge, must push out with 
bold adventure beyond the common walks 
of men. But only a few pioneers are needed 
for the largest armies, and a few profound 
men in each occupation may herald the 
advance of all the business of society. The 
vast bulk of men are required to discharge 
the homely duties of life ; and they have 
less need of genius than of intellectual 
Industry and patient Enterprise. Young 
men should observe, that those who take 
the honors and emoluments of mechanical 



2 8 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

crafts, of commerce and of professional life, 
are rather distinguished for a sound judg- 
ment and a close application, than for a bril- 
liant genius. In the ordinary business of 
life, Industry can do anything which Gen- 
ius can do ; and very many things which it 
cannoj:. Genius is usually impatient of ap- 
plication, irritable, scornful of men's dul- 
ness, squeamish at petty disgusts : — it loves 
a conspicuous place, a short work, and a 
large reward. It loathes the sweat of toil, 
the vexations of life, and the dull burden of 
care. 

Industry has a firmer muscle, is less an- 
noyed by delays and repulses, and, like 
water, bends itself to the shape of the soil 
over which it flows ; and if checked, will 
not rest, but accumulates, and mines a pas- 
sage beneath, or seeks a side-race, or rises 
above and overflows the obstruction. What 
Genius performs at one impulse, Industry 
gains by a succession of blows. In ordi- 
nary matters they differ only in rapidity of 
execution, and are upon one level before 
men, — who see the result but not the process. 

It is admirable to know that those things 
which in skill, in art, and in learning, the 
world has been unwilling to let die, have 
not only been the conceptions of genius, 
but the products of toil. The masterpieces 
of antiquity, as well in literature, as in art, 



INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS 



29 



are known to have received their extreme 
finish, from an almost incredible continuance 
of labor upon them. I do not remember a 
book in all the departments of learning, nor 
a scrap in literature, nor a work in all the 
schools of art, from which its author has 
derived a permanent renown, that is not 
known to have been long and patiently 
elaborated. Genius needs Industry, as much 
as Industry needs Genius. If only Milton's 
imagination could have conceived his vis- 
ions, his consummate industry only could 
have carved the immortal lines which en- 
shrine them. If only Newton's mind could 
reach out to the secrets of Nature, even his 
could only do it by the homeliest toil. The 
works of Bacon are not midsummer-night 
dreams, but, like coral islands, they have 
risen from the depths of truth, and formed 
their broad surfaces above the ocean by the 
minutest accretions of persevering labor. 
The conceptions of Michael Angelo would 
have perished like a night's phantasy, had 
not his industry given them permanence. 

From enjoying the pleasant walks of In- 
dustry we turn reluctantly to explore the 
paths of Indolence. 

All degrees of Indolence incline a man 
to rely upon others, and not upon himself; 
to eat their bread and not his own. His 
carelessness is somebody's loss ; his neglect 



.3° 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



is somebody's downfall ; his promises are a 
perpetual stumbling block to all who trust 
them. If he borrows, the article remains 
borrowed ; if he begs and gets, it is as the 
letting out of waters— no one knows when 
it will stop. He spoils your work ; disap- 
points your expectations ; exhausts your 
patience ; eats up your substance ; abuses 
your confidence ; and hangs a dead weight 
upon all your plans ; and the very best thing 
an honest man can do with a lazy man, is to 
get rid of him. Solomon says : Bray a fool 
with a pestle, in a mortar zvith wheat, yet 
will not his folly depart from him. He 
does not mention what kind of a fool he 
meant ; but as he speaks of a fool by pre- 
eminence, I take it for granted he meant a 
lazy man ; and I am the more inclined to 
the opinion, from another expression of his 
experience : As vinegar to the teeth, and smoke 
to the eyes, so is the sluggard to them that 
send him. 

Indolence is a great spendthrift. An 
indolently inclined young man can neither 
make nor keep property. I have high 
authority for this : He that is slothful in his 
work, is brother to him that is a great 
waster. 

When Satan would put ordinary men to 
a crop of mischief, like a wise husbandman, 
he clears the ground and prepares it for 



INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS 



31 



seed; but he finds the idle man already 
prepared, and he has scarcely the trouble 
of sowing ; for vices, like weeds, ask little 
strewing, except what the wind gives their 
ripe and winged seeds, shaking and scatter- 
ing them all abroad. Indeed, lazy men 
may fitly be likened to a tropical prairie, 
over which the wind of temptation perpetu- 
ally blows, drifting every vagrant seed from 
hedge and hill, and which — without a 
moment's rest through all the year — 
waves its rank harvest of luxuriant weeds. 

First, the imagination will be haunted 
with unlawful visitants. Upon the out- 
skirts of towns are shattered houses, aban- 
doned by reputable persons. They are not 
empty, because all the day silent ; thieves, 
vagabonds and villains haunt them, in joint 
possession with rats, bats, and vermin. 
Such are idle men's imaginations — full of 
unlawful company. 

The imagination is closely related to the 
passions, and fires them with its heat. The 
day-dreams of indolent youth, glow each 
hour with warmer colors, and bolder ad- 
ventures. The imagination fashions scenes 
of enchantment, in which the passions 
revel ; and it leads them out, in shadow at 
first, to deeds which soon they will seek in 
earnest. The brilliant colors of far-away 
clouds, are but the colors of the storm; 



32 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



the salacious day-dreams of indolent men, 
rosy at first and distant, deepen every day, 
darker and darker, to the color of actual 
evil. Then follows the blight of everv 
habit. Indolence promises without re- 
deeming the pledge ; a mist of forgetful- 
ness rises up and obscures the memory of 
vows and oaths. The negligence of lazi- 
ness breeds more falsehoods than the 
cunning of the sharper. As poverty waits 
upon the steps of Indolence, so, upon such 
poverty, brood equivocations, subterfuges, 
lying denials. Falsehood becomes the in- 
strument of every plan. Negligence of 
truth, next occasional falsehood, then 
wanton mendacity, — these three strides 
traverse the whole road of lies. 

Indolence as surely runs to dishonesty, 
as to lying. Indeed, they are but different 
parts of the same road, and not far apart. 
In directing the conduct of the Ephesian 
converts, Paul says, Let him that stole, steal 
no more, bttt rather let him labor, working 
with his hands the thing which is good. 
The men who were thieves, were those 
who had ceased to work. Industry was 
the road back to honesty. When stores 
are broken open, the idle are first sus- 
pected. The desperate forgeries and swin- 
dlings of past years have taught men, upon 
their occurrence, to ferret their authors 



INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS 



33 



among the unemployed, or among those 
vainly occupied in vicious pleasures. 

The terrible passion for stealing rarely 
grows upon the young, except through the 
necessities of their idle pleasures. Business 
is first neglected for amusement, and 
amusement soon becomes the only business. 
The appetite for vicious pleasure outruns 
the means of procuring it. The theatre, 
the circus, the card-table, the midnight 
carouse, demand money. When scanty 
earnings are gone, the young man pilfers 
from the till. First, because he hopes to 
repay, and next, because he despairs of 
paying — for the disgrace of stealing ten 
dollars or a thousand will be the same, but 
not their respective pleasures. Next, he 
will gamble, since it is only another form 
of stealing. Gradually excluded from rep- 
utable society, the vagrant takes all the 
badges of vice, and is familiar- with her 
paths ; and, through them, enters the broad 
road of crime. Society precipitates its lazy 
members, as water does its filth ; and they 
form at the bottom, a pestilent sediment, 
stirred up by every breeze of evil, into riots, 
robberies and murders. Into it drains all 
the filth, and out of it, as from a morass, 
flow all the streams of pollution. Brutal 
wretches, desperately haunted by the law, 
crawling in human filth, brood here their 
3 



34 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

villain schemes, and plot mischief to man. 
Hither resorts the truculent demagogue, to 
stir up the fetid filth against his adver- 
saries, or to bring up mobs out of this sea, 
which cannot rest, but casts up mire and 
dirt. 

The results of Indolence upon communi- 
ties, are as marked as upon individuals. In 
a town of industrious people, the streets 
would be clean ; houses neat and comfort- 
able ; fences in repair ; school-houses 
swarming with rosy-faced children, decently 
clad, and well-behaved. The laws would 
be respected, because justly administered. 
The church would be thronged with devout 
worshippers. The tavern would be silent, 
and for the most part empty, or a welcome 
retreat for weary travellers. Grog-sellers 
would fail, and mechanics grow rich; labor 
would be honorable, and loafing a disgrace. 
For music, the people would have the 
blacksmith's anvil, and the carpenter's ham- 
mer ; and at home, the spinning-wheel, and 
girls cheerfully singing at their work. 
Debts would be seldom paid, because sel- 
dom made ; but if contracted, no grim offi- 
cer would be invited to the settlement. 
Town-officers would be respectable men, 
taking office reluctantly, and only for the 
public good. Public days would be full of 
sports, without fighting; and elections 



INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS 



35 



would be as orderly as weddings or funer- 
als. 

In a town of lazy-men, I should expect 
to find crazy houses, shingles and weather- 
boards knocked off; doors hingeless, and 
all a-creak ; windows stuffed with rags, hats, 
or pillows. Instead of flowers in summer, 
and warmth in winter, every side of the 
house would swarm with vermin in hot 
weather — and with starveling pigs in cold ; 
fences would be curiosities of lazy contriv- 
ance, and gates hung with ropes, or lying 
flat in the mud. Lank cattle would follow 
every loaded wagon, supplicating a morsel, 
with famine in their looks. Children would 
be ragged, dirty, saucy; the school-house 
empty ; the jail full ; the church silent ; the 
grog-shops noisy ; and the carpenter, the 
saddler, and the blacksmith, would do their 
principal work at taverns. Lawyers would 
reign ; constables flourish, and hunt sneak- 
ing criminals; burly justices, (as their in- 
terests might dictate,) would connive a 
compromise, or make a commitment. The 
peace-officers would wink at tumults, ar- 
rest rioters in fun, and drink with them in 
good earnest. Good men would be obliged 
to keep dark, and bad men would swear, 
fight, and rule the town. Public days would 
be scenes of confusion, and end in rows ; 



36 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



elections would be drunken, illegal, boister- 
ous and brutal. 

The young abhor the last results of Idle- 
ness ; but they do not perceive that the first 
steps lead to the last. They are in the open- 
ing of this career ; but with them it is gen- 
teel leisure, not laziness; it is relaxation, 
not sloth ; amusement, not indolence. But 
leisure, relaxation, and amusement, when 
men ought to be usefully engaged, are In- 
dolence. A specious Industry is the worst 
Idleness. A young man perceives that the 
first steps lead to the last, with everybody 
but himself. He sees others become drunk- 
ards by social tippling, — he sips socially, as 
if he could not be a drunkard. He sees 
others become dishonest, by petty habits of 
fraud ; but will indulge slight aberrations, 
as if he could not become knavish. Though 
others, by lying, lose all character, he does 
not imagine that his little dalliances with 
falsehood will make him a liar. He knows 
that salacious imaginations, villanous pict- 
ures, harlot snuff-boxes, and illicit familiar- 
ities, have led thousands to her door, whose 
house is the way to hell ; yet he never sighs 
or trembles lest these things should take 
him to this inevitable way of damna- 
tion ! 

In reading these strictures upon Indo- 
lence, you will abhor it in others, without 



INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS 



37 



suspecting it in yourself. While you read, 
I fear you are excusing yourself; you are 
supposing that your leisure has not been 
laziness ; or that, with your disposition, and 
in your circumstances, Indolence is harm- 
less. Be not deceived : if you are idle, you 
are on the road to ruin : and there are few 
stopping places upon it. It is rather a prec- 
ipice, than a road. While I point out the 
temptation to Indolence, scrutinize your 
course, and pronounce honestly upon your 
risk. 

I. Some are tempted to Indolence by 
their wretched training, or rather, wretched 
want of it. How many families are the 
most remiss, whose low condition and suf- 
ferings are the strongest inducement to In- 
dustry. The children have no inheritance, 
yet never work ; no education, yet are never 
sent to school. It is hard to keep their 
rags around them, yet none of them will 
earn better raiment. If ever there was a 
case when a Government should interfere 
between parent and child, that seems to be 
the one, where children are started in life 
with an education of vice. If, in every 
community, three things should be put to- 
gether, which always work together, the 
front would be a grog-shop, — the middle a 
jail, — the rear a gallows ; — an infernal trin- 
ity; and the recruits for this three-headed 



38 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



monster, are largely drafted from the lazy 
children of worthless parents. 

2. The children of rich parents are apt 
to be reared in Indolence. The ordinary 
motives to industry are wanting, and the 
temptations to sloth are multiplied. Other 
men labor to provide a support ; to amass 
wealth ; to secure homage ; to obtain 
power ; to multiply the elegant products of 
art. The child of affluence inherits these 
things. Why should he labor who may 
command universal service, whose money 
subsidizes the inventions of art, exhausts 
the luxuries of society, and makes rarities 
common by their abundance ? Only the 
blind would not see that riches and ruin 
run in one channel to prodigal children. 
The most rigorous reg4men, the most con- 
firmed industry, and steadfast morality can 
alone disarm inherited wealth, and reduce 
it to a blessing. The profligate wretch, 
who fondly watches his father's advancing 
decrepitude, and secretly curses the linger- 
ing steps of death, (seldom too slow except 
to hungry heirs,) at last is overblessed in 
the tidings that the loitering work is done — 
and the estate his. When the golden 
shower has fallen, he rules as a prince in a 
court of expectant parasites. All the 
sluices by which pleasurable vice drains an 
estate are opened wide. A few years com- 



INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS 



39 



plete the ruin. The hopeful heir, avoided 
by all whom he has helped, ignorant of 
useful labor, and scorning a knowledge of 
it, fired with an incurable appetite for 
vicious excitement, sinks steadily down, — 
a profligate, a wretch, a villain-scoundrel, a 
convicted felon. Let parents who hate 
their offspring rear them to hate labor, and 
to inherit riches, and before long they will 
be stung by every vice, racked by its 
poison, and damned by its penalty. 

3. Another cause of Idleness is found 
in the secret effects of youthful indulgence. 
The purest pleasures lie within the circle of 
useful occupation. Mere pleasure, — sought 
outside of usefulness, — existing by itself, — 
is fraught with poison. When its exhilara- 
tion has thoroughly kindled the mind, the 
passions thenceforth refuse a simple food ; 
they crave and require an excitement, 
higher than any ordinary occupation can 
give. After revelling all night in wine- 
dreams, or amid the fascinations of the 
dance, or the deceptions of the drama, what 
has the dull store, or the dirty shop, which 
can continue the pulse at this fever-heat of 
delight? The face of Pleasure to the 
youthful imagination, is the face of an an- 
gel, a paradise of smiles, a home of love; 
while the rugged face of Industry, em- 
browned by toil, is dull and repulsive : but 



40 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



at the end it is not so. These are harlot 
charms which Pleasure wears. At last, 
when Industry shall put on her beautiful 
garments, and rest in the palace which her 
own hands have built, — Pleasure, blotched 
and diseased with indulgence, shall lie down 
and die upon the dung-hill. 

4. Example leads to Idleness. The 
children of industrious parents at the sight 
of vagrant rovers seeking their sports 
wherever they will, disrelish labor, and 
envy this unrestrained leisure. At the first 
relaxation of parental vigilance, they shrink 
from their odious tasks. Idleness is begun 
when labor is a burden, and industry a 
bondage, and only idle relaxation a pleas- 
ure. 

The example of political men, office- 
seekers, and public officers, is not usually 
conducive to Industry. The idea insensi- 
bly fastens upon the mind, that greatness 
and hard labor are not companions. The 
inexperience of youth imagines that great 
men are men of great leisure. They see 
them much in public, often applauded, and 
greatly followed. How disgusting in con- 
trast is the mechanic's life; a tinkering 
shop, — dark and smutty, — is the only theatre 
of his exploits ; and labor, which covers 
him with sweat and fills him with weari- 
ness, brings neither notice nor praise. The 



INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS 4I 

ambitious apprentice, sighing over his soiled 
hands, hates his ignoble work ; — neglecting 
it, he aspires to better things, — plots in a 
caucus ; declaims in a bar-room ; fights in a 
grog-shop; and dies in a ditch. 

5. But the Indolence begotten by venal 
ambition must not be so easily dropped. 
At those periods of occasional disaster 
when embarrassments cloud the face of 
commerce, and trade drags heavily, sturdy 
laborers forsake industrial occupations, and 
petition for office. Had I a son able to 
gain a livelihood by toil, I had rather bury 
him, than witness his beggarly supplications 
for office; — sneaking along the path of 
men's passions to gain his advantage ; hold- 
ing in the breath of his honest opinions ; 
and breathing feigned words of flattery to 
hungry ears, popular or official ; and crawl- 
ing, viler than a snake, through all the un- 
manly courses by which ignoble wretches 
purloin the votes of the dishonest, the 
drunken, and the vile. 

The late reverses of commerce have un- 
settled the habits of thousands. Manhood 
seems debilitated, and many sturdy yeomen 
are ashamed of nothing but labor. For a 
farthing-pittance of official salary, — for the 
miserable fees of a constable's office, — for 
the parings and perquisites of any deputy- 
ship, — a hundred men in every village, rush 



42 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



forward, — scrambling, jostling, crowding, — 
•each more obsequious than the other to 
lick the hand that holds the omnipotent 
vote, or the starveling office. The most 
supple cunning gains the prize. Of the dis- 
appointed crowd, a few, rebuked by their 
sober reflections, go back to their honest 
trade, — ashamed and cured of office-seeking. 
But the majority grumble for a day, then 
prick forth their ears, arrange their feline 
arts, and mouse again for another office. 
The general appetite for office and disrelish 
for industrial callings, is a prolific source of 
Idleness ; and it would be well for the honor 
of young men if they were bred to regard 
office as fit only for those who have clearly 
shown themselves able and willing to sup- 
port their families without it. No office can 
make a worthless man respectable ; and a 
man of integrity, thrift, and religion, has 
name enough without badge or office. 

6. Men become Indolent through the 
reverses of fortune. Surely, despondency 
is a grievous thing, and a heavy load to 
bear. To see disaster and wreck in the pres- 
ent, and no light in the future ; but only 
storms, lurid by the contrast of past pros- 
perity, and growing darker as they advance ; 
— to wear a constant expectation of woe like 
a girdle ; to see want at the door, imperi- 
ously knocking, while there is no strength 



INDUSTRY AND IDLENESS 43 

to repel, or courage to bear its tyranny ; — - 
indeed, this is dreadful enough. But there is 
a thing more dreadful. It is more dreadful 
if the man is wrecked with his fortune. Can 
anything be more poignant in anticipation, 
than one's ownself, unnerved, cowed down 
and slackened to utter pliancy, and help- 
lessly drifting and driven down the troubled 
sea of life ? Of all things on earth, next to 
his God, a broken man should cling to a 
courageous Industry. If it brings nothing 
back, and saves nothing, it will save him. 
To be pressed down by adversity has 
nothing in it of disgrace ; but it is disgrace- 
ful to lie down under it like a supple dog. 
Indeed, to stand composedly in the storm, 
amidst its rage and wildest devastations ; to 
let it beat over you, and roar around you, 
and pass by you, and leave you undismayed, 
— this is to be a man. Adversity is the 
mint in which God stamps upon us his 
image and superscription. In this matter 
men may learn of insects. The ant will 
repair his dwelling as often as the mis- 
chievous foot crushes it; the spider will 
exhaust life itself, before he will live without 
a web ; — the bee can be decoyed from his 
labor neither by plenty nor scarcity. If 
summer be abundant it toils none the less ; 
if it be parsimonious of flowers, the tiny 
laborer sweeps a wider circle, and by In- 



44 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

dustry, repairs the frugality of the season. 
Man should be ashamed to be rebuked in 
vain by the spider, the ant, and the bee. 

Seest thou a man diligent in his business, 
he shall stand before kings, he shall not stand 
before mean men. 



TWELVE CAUSES OF 
DISHONESTY 



Providing for honest things, not only in the sight of the 
Lord, but also in the sight of men. 2 Cor. viii. 21. 

ONLY extraordinary circumstances can 
give the appearance of dishonesty to 
an honest man. Usually, not to seem 
honest, is not to be so. The quality must 
not be doubtful like twilight, lingering 
between night and day and taking hues from 
both ; it must be day-light, clear, and efful- 
gent. This is the doctrine of the Bible : 
Providing for honest thi?tgs f not only in the 
sight of the Lord, but also in the sight of 
men. In general it may be said that no one 
has honesty without dross, until he has 
honesty without suspicion. 

We are passing through times upon 
which the seeds of dishonesty have been 
sown broadcast, and they have brought forth 
a hundred-fold. These times will pass 
away; but like ones will come again. As 

(45) 



46 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



physicians study the causes and record the 
phenomena of plagues and pestilences, to 
draw from them an antidote against their 
recurrence, so should we leave to another 
generation a history of moral plagues, as the 
best antidote to their recurring malignity. 

Upon a land, — capacious beyond measure, 
whose prodigal soil rewards labor with an 
unharvestable abundance of exuberant 
fruits, occupied by a people signalized by 
enterprise and industry, — there came a sum- 
mer of prosperity which lingered so long 
and shone so brightly, that men forgot that 
winter could ever come. Each day grew 
brighter. No reins were put upon the 
imagination. Its dreams passed for realities. 
Even sober men, touched with wildness, 
seemed to expect a realization of oriental 
tales. Upon this bright day came sudden 
frosts, storms, and blight. Men awoke from 
gorgeous dreams in the midst of desolation. 
The harvests of years were swept away in 
a day. The strongest firms were rent as 
easily as the oak by lightning. Speculating 
companies were dispersed as seared leaves 
from a tree in autumn. Merchants were 
ruined by thousands ; clerks turned adrift 
by ten thousands. Mechanics were left 
in idleness. Farmers sighed over flocks 
and wheat as useless as the stones and dirt. 
The wide sea of commerce was stagnant; 



TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY 



47 



upon the realm of Industry settled down a 
sullen lethargy. 

Out of this reverse swarmed an unnum- 
bered host of dishonest men, like vermin 
from a carcass. Banks were exploded., — or 
robbed, — or fleeced by astounding forgeries. 
Mighty companies, without cohesion, went 
to pieces, and hordes of wretches snatched 
up every bale that came ashore. Cities 
were ransacked by troops of villains. The 
unparalleled frauds, which sprung like 
mines on every hand, set every man to 
trembling lest the next explosion should be 
under his own feet. Fidelity seemed to 
have forsaken men. Many that had earned 
a reputation for sterling honesty were cast 
so suddenly headlong into wickedness, that 
man shrank from man. Suspicion overgrew 
confidence, and the heart bristled with the 
nettles and thorns of fear and jealousy. 
Then had almost come to pass the divine 
delineation of ancient wickedness : The good 
man is perished out of the earth : and there is 
none upright among men : they all' lie in wait 
for blood ; they hunt every man his brother 
with a net. That they may do evil zvitli 
both hands earnestly, the prince and the judge 
ask for a reward : and tfy great man utter- 
eth his mischievous desire ; so they wrap it 
up. The best of them is a brier ; the most 
upright is sharper than a thorn hedge. The 



4 8 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



world looked upon a continent of inex- 
haustible fertility, (whose harvest had 
glutted the markets, and rotted in disuse,) 
filled with lamentation, and its inhabitants 
wandering like bereaved citizens among the 
ruins of an earthquake, mourning for chil- 
dren, for houses crushed, and property 
buried forever. 

That no measure might be put to the 
calamity, the Church of God, which rises a 
stately tower of refuge to desponding men, 
seemed now to have lost its power of pro- 
tection. When the solemn voice of Re- 
ligion should have gone over the land, as 
the call of God to guilty man to seek in 
him their strength ; in this time when Re- 
ligion should have restored sight to the 
blind, made the lame to walk, and bound 
up the broken-hearted, she was herself 
mourning in sackcloth. Out of her courts 
came the noise of warring sects ; some con- 
tending against others with bitter warfare ; 
and some, possessed of a demon, wallowed 
upon the ground foaming and rending 
themselves. In a time of panic, and disas- 
ter, and distress, and crime, the fountain 
which should have been for the healing of 
men, cast up its f sediments, and gave out 
a bitter stream of pollution. 

In every age, an universal pestilence has 
hushed the clamor of contention, and cooled 



TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY 



49 



the heats of parties ; but the greatness of 
our national calamity seemed only to en- 
kindle the fury of political parties. Con- 
tentions never ran with such deep streams 
and impetuous currents, as amidst the ruin 
of our industry and prosperity. States 
were greater debtors to foreign nations, than 
their citizens were to each other. Both 
states and citizens shrunk back from their 
debts, and yet more dishonestly from the 
taxes necessary to discharge them. The 
General Government did not escape, but 
lay becalmed, or pursued its course, like a 
.ship, at every furlong touching the rocks, 
or beating against the sands. The Capitol 
trembled with the first waves of a question 
which is yet to shake the whole land. New 
questions of exciting qualities perplexed 
the realm of legislation, and of morals. To 
all this must be added a manifest decline 
of family government ; an increase 
of the ratio of popular ignorance; a de- 
crease of reverence for law, and an effemi- 
nate administration of it. Popular tumults 
have been as frequent as freshets in our 
rivers ; and like them, have swept over the 
land with desolation, and left their filthy 
slime in the highest places : — upon the 
press ; — upon the legislature ; — in the halls 
of our courts; — and even upon the sacred 
bench of Justice. If unsettled times foster 
4 



5o 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



dishonesty, it should have flourished among 
us. And it has. 

Our nation must expect a periodical re- 
turn of such convulsions ; but experience 
should steadily curtail their ravages, and 
remedy their immoral tendencies. Young 
men have before them lessons of manifold 
wisdom taught by the severest of masters — 
experience. They should be studied ; and 
that they may be, I shall, from this general 
survey, turn to a specific enumeration of 
the causes of dishonesty. 

1. Some men find in their bosom from 
the first, a vehement inclination to dishon- 
est ways. Knavish propensities are in- 
herent : born with the child and transmissi- 
ble from parent to son. The children of a 
sturdy thief, if taken from him at birth and 
reared by honest men, would, doubtless, 
have to contend against a strongly dishon- 
est inclination. Foundlings and orphans 
under public charitable charge, are more 
apt to become vicious than other children. 
They are usually born of low and vicious 
parents, and inherit their parents' propen- 
sities. Only the most thorough moral 
training can overrule this innate deprav- 
ity. 

2. A child naturally fair-minded, may 
become dishonest by parental example. He 
is early taught to be sharp in bargains, and 



TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY 



51 



vigilant for every advantage. Little is said 
about honesty, and much upon shrewd 
traffic. A dexterous trick, becomes a 
family anecdote ; visitors are regaled with 
the boy's precocious keenness. Hearing 
the praise of his exploits, he studies craft, 
and seeks parental admiration by adroit 
knaveries. He is taught, for his safety, 
that he must not range beyond the law: 
that would be unprofitable. He calculates 
his morality thus : Legal honesty is the best 
policy, — dishonesty, then, is a bad bargain 
— and therefore wrong — everything is 
wrong which is unthrifty. Whatever profit 
breaks no legal statute — though it is gained 
by falsehood, by unfairness, by gloss ; 
through dishonor, unkindness, and an un- 
scrupulous conscience — he considers fair, 
and says : The law allows it. Men may 
spend a long life without an indictable 
action, and without an honest one. No 
law can reach the insidious ways of subtle 
craft. The law allows, and religion forbids 
men, to profit by others' misfortunes, to 
prowl for prey among the ignorant, to over- 
reach the simple, to suck the last life-drops 
from the bleeding; to hover over men as a 
vulture over herds, swooping down upon 
the weak, the straggling, and the weary. 
The infernal craft of cunning men, turns the 
law itself to piracy, and works outrageous 



52 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



fraud in the hall of Courts, by the decision 
of judges, and under the seal of Justice. 

3. Dishonesty is learned from one's em- 
ployers. The boy of honest parents and 
honestly bred, goes to a trade, or a store, 
where the employer practises legal frauds. 
The plain honesty of the boy excites roars 
of laughter among the better taught clerks. 
The master tells them that such blundering 
truthfulness must be pitied ; the boy evi- 
dently has been neglected, and is not to be 
ridiculed for what he could not help. At 
first, it verily pains the youth's scruples, 
and tinges his face to frame a deliberate 
dishonesty, to finish, and to polish it. His 
tongue stammers at a lie ; but the example 
of a rich master, the jeers and gibes of 
shopmates, with gradual practice, cure all 
this. He becomes adroit in fleecing custo- 
mers for his master's sake, and equally 
dexterous in fleecing his master for his own 
sake. 

4. Extravagance is a prolific source of 
dishonesty. Extravagance, — which is fool- 
ish expense, or expense disproportionate to 
one's means, — may be found in all grades 
of society ; but it is chiefly apparent among 
the rich, those aspiring to wealth, and those 
wishing to be thought affluent. Many a 
young man cheats his business, by trans- 
ferring his means to theatres, race-courses, 



TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY 



53 



expensive parties, and to the name-less and 
numberless projects of pleasure. The en- 
terprise of others is baffled by the extrava- 
gance of their family; for few men can 
make as much in a year as an extravagant 
woman can carry on her back in one winter. 
Some are ambitious of fashionable society, 
and will gratify their vanity at any expense. 
This disproportion between means and 
expense soon brings on a crisis. The 
victim is straitened for money ; without it 
he must abandon his rank; for fashionable 
society remorselessly rejects all butterflies 
which have lost their brilliant colors. 
Which shall he choose, honesty and morti- 
fying exclusion, or gaiety purchased by 
dishonesty ? The severity of this choice 
sometimes sobers the intoxicated brain ; 
and a young man shrinks from the gulf, 
appalled at the darkness of dishonesty. 
But to excessive vanity, high-life with or 
without fraud, is Paradise ; and any other 
life Purgatory. Here many resort to dis- 
honesty without a scruple. It is at this 
point that public sentiment half sustains 
dishonesty. It scourges the thief of Neces- 
sity, and pities the thief of Fashion. 

The struggle with others is on the very 
ground of honor. A wife led from affluence 
to frigid penury and neglect ; from leisure 
and luxury to toil and want ; daughters, 



54 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEAT 



once courted as rich, to be disesteemed 
when poor, — this is the gloomy prospect, 
seen through a magic haze of despondency. 
Honor, love and generosity, strangely be- 
witched, plead for dishonesty as the only 
alternative to such suffering. But go, 
young man, to your wife ; tell her the alter- 
native ; if she is worthy of you, she will 
face your poverty with a courage which 
shall shame your fears, and lead you into 
its wilderness and through it, all unshrink- 
ing. Many there be who went weeping 
into this desert, and ere long, having found 
in it the fountains of the purest peace, have 
thanked God for the pleasures of poverty. 
But if your wife unmans your resolution, 
imploring dishonor rather than penury, 
may God pity and help you ! You dwell 
with a sorceress, and few can resist her 
wiles. 

5. Debt is an inexhaustible fountain of 
Dishonesty. The Royal Preacher tells us : 
The borrower is servant to the lender. Debt 
is a rigorous servitude. The debtor learns 
the cunning tricks, delays, concealments, 
and frauds, by which slaves evade or cheat 
their master. He is tempted to make 
ambiguous statements ; pledges, with secret 
passages of escape ; contracts, with fraudu- 
lent constructions ; lying excuses, and 
more mendacious promises. He is tempted 



TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY 



55 



to elude responsibility ; to delay settle- 
ments ; to prevaricate upon the terms ; to 
resist equity, and devise specious fraud. 
When the eager creditor would restrain 
such vagrancy by law, the debtor then 
thinks himself released from moral obliga- 
tion, and brought to a legal game, in which 
it is lawful for the best player to win. He 
disputes true accounts ; he studies subter- 
fuges ; extorts provocatious delays ; and 
harbors in every nook, and corner, and 
passage, of the law's labyrinth. At length 
the measure is filled up, and the malignant 
power of debt is known. It has opened in 
the heart every fountain of iniquity ; it has 
besoiled the conscience ; it has tarnished 
the honor ; it has made the man a deliber- 
ate student of knavery; a systematic practi- 
tioner of fraud: it has dragged him through 
all the sewers of petty passions, — anger, 
hate, revenge, malicious folly, or malignant 
shame. When a debtor is beaten at every 
point, and the law will put her screws 
upon him, there is no depth in the gulf of 
dishonesty into which he will not boldly 
plunge. Some men put their property to 
the flames, assassinate the detested creditor, 
and end the frantic tragedy by suicide, or 
the gallows. Others, in view of the catas- 
trophe, have converted all property to cash, 
and concealed it. The law's utmost skill, 



56 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

and the creditor's fury, are alike powerless 
now, — the tree is green and thrifty ; its 
roots drawing a copious supply from some 
hidden fountain. 

Craft has another harbor of resort for the 
piratical crew of dishonesty; viz.: putting 
the property out of the law's reach by a 
fraudulent conveyance. Whoever runs in 
debt, and consumes the equivalent of his 
indebtedness ; whoever is fairly liable to 
damage for broken contracts ; whoever by 
folly, has incurred debts and lost the bene- 
fit of his outlay ; whoever is legally obliged 
to pay for his malice or carelessness ; who- 
ever by infidelity to public trusts has made 
his property a just remuneration for his 
defaults ; — whoever of all these, or who- 
ever, under any circumstances, puts out of 
his hands property, morally or legally due 
to creditors, is a dishonest man. The 
crazy excuses which men render to their 
consciences, are only such as every villain 
makes, who is unwilling to look upon the 
black face of his crimes. 

He who will receive a conveyance of prop- 
erty, knowing it to be illusive and fraudu- 
lent, is as wicked as the principal ; and as 
much meaner, as the tool and subordinate 
of villany is meaner than the master who 
uses him. 

If a church, knowing all these facts, or 



TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY 



57 



wilfully ignorant of them, allows a member 
to nestle in the security of the sanctuary ; 
then the act of this robber, and the conniv- 
ance of the church, are but the two parts of 
one crime. 

6. Bankruptcy, although a branch of 
debt, deserves a separate mention. It some- 
times crushes a man's spirit, and sometimes 
exasperates it. The poignancy of the evil 
depends much upon the disposition of the 
creditors ; and as much upon the disposi- 
tion of the victim. Should they act with 
the lenity of Christian men, and he with 
manly honesty, promptly rendering up what- 
ever satisfaction of debt he has, — he may 
visit the lowest places of human adversity, 
and find there the light of good men's es- 
teem, the support of conscience, and the 
sustenance of religion. 

A bankrupt may fall into the hands of 
men whose tender-mercies are cruel ; or his 
dishonest equivocations may exasperate 
their temper and provoke every thorn and 
brier of the law. When men's passions are 
let loose, especially their avarice whetted 
by real or imaginary wrong ; when there is 
a rivalry among creditors, lest any one 
should feast upon the victim more than his 
share ; and they all rush upon him like 
wolves upon a wounded deer, dragging him 
down, ripping him open, breast and flank, 



58 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

plunging deep their bloody muzzles to reach 
the heart and taste blood at the very foun- 
tain ; — is it strange that resistance is desper- 
ate and unscrupulous? At length the suf- 
ferer drags his mutilated carcass aside, every 
nerve and muscle wrung with pain, and his 
whole body an instrument of agony. He 
curses the whole inhuman crew with en- 
venomed imprecations ; and thenceforth, a 
brooding misanthrope, he pays back to so- 
ciety, by studied villanies, the legal wrongs 
which the relentless justice of a few, or his 
own knavery, have brought upon him. 

7. There is a circle of moral dishonesties 
practised because the law allows them. 
The very anxiety of law to reach the de- 
vices of cunning, so perplexes its statutes 
with exceptions, limitations, and supple- 
ments, that like a castle gradually enlarged 
for centuries, it has its crevices, dark cor- 
ners, secret holes and winding passages — 
an endless harbor for rats and vermin, where 
no trap can catch them. We are vilia- 
nously infested with legal rats and rascals, 
who are able to commit the most flagrant 
dishonesties with impunity. They can do 
all of wrong which is profitable, without 
that part which is actionable. The very 
ingenuity of these miscreants excites such 
admiration of their skill, that their life is 
gilded with a specious respectability. Men 



TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY 



59 



profess little esteem for blunt, necessitous 
thieves, who rob and run away; but for a 
gentleman who can break the whole of 
God's law so adroitly, as to leave man's law 
unbroken ; who can indulge in such con- 
servative stealing that his fellow-men award 
him a rank among honest men for the ex- 
cessive skill of his dishonesty — for such a 
one, I fear, there is almost universal sym- 
pathy. 

8. Political Dishonesty, breeds dis- 
honesty of every kind. It is possible for 
good men to permit single sins to co-exist 
with general integrity, where the evil is in- 
dulged through ignorance. Once, un- 
doubted Christians were slave-traders. They 
might be, while unenlightened; but not in 
our times. A state of mind which will in- 
tend one fraud, will, upon occasions, intend 
a thousand. He that upon one emergency 
will lie, will be supplied with emergencies. 
He that will perjure himself to save a friend, 
will do it, in a desperate juncture, to save 
himself. The highest Wisdom has informed 
us that He that is unjust in the least, is un- 
just also in much. Circumstances may with- 
draw a politician from temptation to any 
but political dishonesty ; but under temp- 
tation, a dishonest politician would be a 
dishonest cashier, — would be dishonest 
anywhere, — in anything. The fury which 



6q LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

destroys an opponent's character, would 
stop at nothing, if barriers were thrown 
down. That which is true of the leaders 
in politics, is true of subordinates. Politi- 
cal dishonesty in voters runs into general dis- 
honesty, as the rotten speck taints the 
whole apple. A community whose politics 
are conducted by a perpetual breach of 
honesty on both sides, will be tainted by 
immorality throughout. Men will play the 
same game in their private affairs, which 
they have learned to play in public matters. 
The guile, the crafty vigilance, the dishon- 
est advantage, the cunning sharpness ; — the 
tricks and traps and sly evasions ; the equiv- 
ocal promises, and unequivocal neglect of 
them, which characterize political action, 
will equally characterize private action. 
The mind has no kitchen to do its 
dirty work in, while the parlor remains 
clean. Dishonesty is an atmosphere ; if it 
comes into one apartment, it penetrates into 
every one. Whoever will lie in politics, 
will lie in traffic. Whoever will slander in 
politics, will slander in personal squabbles. 
A professor of religion who is a dishonest 
politician, is a dishonest Christian. His 
creed is a perpetual index of his hypocrisy. 
The genius of our government directs 
the attention of every citizen to politics. 
Its spirit reaches the uttermost bound of 



TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY 6j 

society, and pervades the whole mass. If 
its channels are slimy with corruption, what 
limit can be set to its malign influence? 
The turbulence of elections, the virulence 
of the press, the desperation of bad men, 
the hopelessness of efforts which are not 
cunning, but only honest, have driven many 
conscientious men from any concern 
with politics. This is suicidal. Thus the 
tempest will grow blacker and fiercer. Our 
youth will be caught up in its whirling bos- 
om and dashed to pieces, and its hail will 
break down every green thing. At God's 
house the cure should begin. Let the 
hand of discipline smite the leprous lips 
which shall utter the profane heresy: All 
is fair in politics. If any hoary professor, 
drunk with the mingled wine of excite- 
ment, shall tell our youth, that a Christian 
man may act in politics by any other rule 
of morality than that of the Bible ; and 
that wickedness performed for a party, is 
not as abominable, as if done for a man ; or 
that any necessity justifies or palliates dis- 
honesty in word or deed, — let such a one 
go out of the camp, and his pestilent breath 
no longer spread contagion among our 
youth. No man who loves his country, 
should shrink from her side when she 
groans with raging distempers. Let every 
Christian man stand in his place ; rebuke 



6 2 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

every dishonest practice ; scorn a political 
as well as a personal lie ; and refuse with 
indignation to be insulted by the solicitation 
of an immoral man. Let good men of all 
parties require honesty, integrity, veracity, 
and morality in politics, and there, as pow- 
erfully as anywhere else, the requisitions of 
public sentiment will ultimately be felt. 

9. A corrupt public sentiment produces 
dishonesty. A public sentiment, in which 
dishonesty is not disgraceful ; in which bad 
men are respectable, are trusted, are hon- 
ored, are exalted — is a curse to the young. 
The fever of speculation, the universal de- 
rangement of business, the growing laxness 
of morals, is, to an alarming extent, intro- 
ducing such a state of things. Men of no- 
torious immorality, whose dishonesty is 
flagrant, whose private habits would dis- 
grace the ditch, are powerful and popular. 
I have seen a man stained with every sin, 
except those which required courage ; into 
whose head I do not think a pure thought 
has entered for forty years; in whose heart 
an honorable feeling would droop for very 
loneliness ; — in evil he was ripe and rotten ; 
hoary and depraved in deed, in word, in his 
present life and in all his past ; evil when 
by himself, and viler among men ; corrupting 
to the young ; — to domestic fidelity, a rec- 
reant; to common honor, a traitor; to 



TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY 



63 



honesty, an outlaw ; to religion, a hypocrite ; 
— base in all that is worthy of man, and ac- 
complished in whatever is disgraceful ; and 
yet this wretch could go where he would ; 
enter good men's dwellings, and purloin 
their votes. Men would curse him, yet obey 
him; hate him and assist him; warn their 
sons against him, and lead them to the polls 
for him. A public sentiment which produces 
ignominious knaves, cannot breed honest 
men. 

Any calamity, civil or commercial, which 
checks the administration of justice between 
man and man, is ruinous to honesty. The 
violent fluctuations of business cover the 
ground with rubbish over which men stum- 
ble ; and fill the air with dust, in which 
all the shapes of honesty appear distorted. 
Men are thrown upon unusual expedients ; 
dishonesties are unobserved ; those who 
have been reckless and profuse, stave off 
the legitimate fruits of their folly by des- 
perate shifts. We have not yet emerged from 
a period, in which debts were insecure; 
the debtor legally protected against the 
rights of the creditor; taxes laid, not by 
the requirements of justice, but for political 
effect; and lowered to a dishonest insuffi- 
ciency ; and when thus diminished, not col- 
lected ; the citizens resisting their own offi- 
cers ; officers resigning at the bidding of 



6 4 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



the electors ; the laws of property paralyzed ; 
bankrupt laws built up ; and stay-laws un- 
constitutionally enacted, upon which the 
courts look with aversion, yet fear to deny 
them, lest the wildness of popular opinion 
should roll back disdainfully upon the 
bench, to despoil its dignity, and prostrate 
its power. General suffering has made us 
tolerant of general dishonesty; and the 
gloom of our commercial disaster threatens 
to become the pall of our morals. 

If the shocking stupidity of the public 
mind to atrocious dishonesties is not 
aroused ; if good men do not bestir them- 
selves to drag the young from this foul 
sorcery ; if the relaxed bands of honesty 
are not tightened, and conscience intoned 
to a severer morality, our night is at hand, 
— our midnight not far off. Woe to that 
guilty people who sit down upon broken 
laws, and wealth saved by injustice! Woe 
to a generation fed upon the bread of fraud, 
whose children's inheritance shall be a per- 
petual memento of their fathers' unright- 
eousness ; to whom dishonesty shall be 
made pleasant by association with the re- 
vered memories of father, brother, and 
friend ! 

But when a whole people, united by a 
common disregard of justice, conspire to 
defraud public creditors; and States vie 



TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY 



65 



with States in an infamous repudiation of 
just debts, by open or sinister methods; 
and nations exert their sovereignty to protect 
and dignify the knavery of a Common- 
wealth ; then the confusion of domestic 
affairs has bred a fiend, before whose flight 
honor fades away, and under whose feet the 
sanctity of truth and the religion of solemn 
compacts are stamped down and ground into 
the dirt. Need we ask the causes of grow- 
ing dishonesty among the young, and the 
increasing untrustworthiness of all agents, 
when States are seen clothed with the pan- 
oply of dishonesty, and nations put on 
fraud for their garments ? 

Absconding agents, swindling schemes, 
and defalcations, occurring in such melan- 
choly abundance, have at length ceased to 
be wonders, and rank with the common 
accidents of fire and flood. The budget of 
each week is incomplete without its mob 
and runaway cashier — its duel and defaulter; 
and as waves which roll to the shore are 
lost in those which follow on, so the vil- 
lanies of each week obliterate the record of 
the last. 

The mania of dishonesty cannot arise 
from local causes ; it is the result of disease 
in the whole community; an eruption be- 
tokening foulness of the blood ; blotches 
symptomatic of a disordered system. 
5 



66 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

10. Financial agents are especially lia- 
ble to the temptations of Dishonesty. Safe 
merchants, and visionary schemers ; saga- 
cious adventurers, and rash speculators ; 
frugal beginners, and retired millionaires, 
are constantly around them. Every word, 
every act, every entry, every letter, suggests 
only wealth — its germ, its bud, its blossom, 
its golden harvest. Its brilliance dazzles the 
sight; its seductions stir the appetites; its 
power fires the ambition, and the soul con- 
centrates its energies to obtain wealth, as 
life's highest and only joy. 

Besides the influence of such associations, 
direct dealing in money as a commodity, 
has a peculiar effect upon the heart. 
There is no property between it and the 
mind; — no medium to mellow its light. 
The mind is diverted and refreshed by no 
thoughts upon the quality of soils ; the 
durability of structures ; the advantages 
of sites ; the beauty of fabrics ; it is not 
invigorated by the necessity of labor and 
ingenuity which the mechanic feels ; by 
the invention of the artisan, or the taste 
of the artist. The whole attention falls 
directly upon naked Money. The hourly 
sight of it whets the appetite, and sharpens 
it to avarice. Thus, with an intense regard 
of riches, steals in also the miser's relish of 
coin — that insatiate gazing and fondling, 



TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY 



6 7 



by which seductive metal wins to itself all 
the blandishments of love. 

Those who mean to be rich, often begin 
by imitating the expensive courses of those 
who are rich. They are also tempted to 
venture, before they have means of their 
own, in brilliant speculations. How can a 
young cashier pay the drafts of his illicit 
pleasures, or procure the seed, for the 
harvest of speculation, out of his narrow 
salary ? Here first begins to work the 
leaven of death. The mind wanders in 
dreams of gain ; it broods over projects 
of unlawful riches ; stealthily at first, and 
then with less reserve ; at last it boldly 
meditates the possibility of being dishonest 
and safe. When a man can seriously 
reflect upon dishonesty as a possible and 
profitable thing, he is already deeply dis- 
honest. To a mind so tainted, will flock 
stories of consummate craft, of effective 
knavery, of fraud covered by its brilliant 
success. At times, the mind shrinks from 
its own thoughts, and trembles to look down 
the giddy cliff on whose edge they poise, 
or over which they fling themselves like 
sporting sea-birds. But these imaginations 
will not be driven from the heart where 
they have once nested. They haunt a 
man's business, visit him in dreams, and 
vampire-like, fan the slumbers of the victim 



68 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

whom they will destroy. In some feverish 
hour, vibrating between conscience and 
avarice, the man staggers to a compromise. 
To satisfy his conscience he refuses to 
steal ; and to gratify his avarice, he borrows 
the funds ; — not openly — not of owners — 
not of men: but of the tiH — the safe — the 
vault ! 

He resolves to restore the money before 
discovery can ensue, and pocket the profits. 
Meanwhile, false entries are made, perjured 
oaths are sworn, forged papers are filed. 
His expenses grow profuse, and men 
wonder from what fountain so copious a 
stream can flow. 

Let us stop here to survey his condition. 
He flourishes, is called prosperous, thinks 
himself safe. Is he safe, or honest? He 
has stolen, and embarked the amount upon 
a sea over which wander perpetual storms ; 
where wreck is the common fate, and escape 
the accident ; and now all his chance for 
the semblance of honesty, is staked upon 
the return of his embezzlements from 
among the sands, the rocks and currents, 
the winds and waves, and darkness, of 
tumultuous speculation. At length dawns 
the day of discovery. His guilty dreams 
have long foretokened it. As he confronts 
the disgrace almost face to face, how 
changed is the hideous aspect of his deed, 



TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY 



6 9 



from that fair face of promise with which it 
tempted him ! Conscience, and honor, and 
plain honesty, which left him when they 
could not restrain, now come back to 
sharpen his anguish. Overawed by the 
prospect of open shame, of his wife's dis- 
grace, and his children's beggary, he cows 
down, and slinks out of life a frantic suicide. 
Some there be, however, less supple to 
shame. They meet their fate with cool 
impudence ; defy their employers ; brave 
the court, and too often with success. The 
delusion of the public mind, or the con- 
fusion of affairs is such, that, while petty 
culprits are tumbled into prison, a cool, 
calculating and immense scoundrel is pitied, 
dandled and nursed by a sympathizing 
community. In the broad road slanting to 
the rogue's retreat, are seen the officer 
of the bank, the agent of the state, the 
officer of the church, in indiscriminate 
haste, outrunning a lazy justice, and bear- 
ing off the gains of astounding frauds. 
Avarice and pleasure seem to have dis- 
solved the conscience. It is a day of trouble 
and of perplexity from the Lord. We trem- 
ble to think that our children must leave 
the covert of the family, and go out upon 
that dark and yeasty sea, from whose wrath 
so many wrecks are cast up at our feet. 
Of one thing I am certain; if the church of 



7o 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



Christ is silent to such deeds, and makes her 
altar a refuge to such dishonesty, the day- 
is coming when she shall have no altar, the 
light shall go out from her candlestick, her 
walls shall be desolate, and the fox look 
out at her windows. 

ii. Executive clemency, by its fre- 
quency, has been a temptation to Dishon- 
esty. Who will fear to be a culprit when a 
legal sentence is the argument of pity, and 
the prelude of pardon ? What can the 
community expect but growing dishonesty, 
when juries connive at acquittals, and judges 
condemn only to petition a pardon ; when 
honest men and officers fly before a mob ; 
when jails are besieged and threatened, if 
felons are not relinquished ; when the Exec- 
utive, consulting the spirit of the commu- 
nity, receives the demands of the mob, and 
humbly complies, throwing down the fences 
of the law, that base rioters may walk 
unimpeded, to their work of vengeance, or 
unjust mercy ? A sickly sentimentality too 
often enervates the administration of justice ; 
and the pardoning power becomes the 
master-key to let out unwashed, unrepent- 
ant criminals. They have fleeced us, robbed 
us, and are ulcerous sores to the body 
politic ; yet our heart turns to water over 
their merited punishment. A fine young 
fellow, by accident, writes another's name 



TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY 



71 



for his own ; by a mistake equally unfortu- 
nate, he presents it at the bank ; innocently 
draws out the large amount ; generously 
spends a part, and absent-mindedly hides 
the rest Hard-hearted wretches there are, 
who would punish him for this ! Young 
men, admiring the neatness of the affair, 
pity his misfortune, and curse a stupid 
jury that knew no better than to send to a 
penitentiary, him, whose skill deserved a 
cashiership. He goes to his cell, the pity 
of a whole metropolis. Bulletins from 
Sing-Sing inform us daily what Edwards * 
is doing, as if he were Napoleon at St. 
Helena. At length pardoned, he will go 
forth again to a renowned liberty ! 

If there be oneway quicker than another, 
by which the Executive shall assist crime, 
and our laws foster it, it is that course 
which assures every dishonest man, that it 
is easy to defraud, easy to avoid arrest, easy 
to escape punishment, and easiest of all to 
obtain a pardon. 

12. Commercial speculations are pro- 
lific of Dishonesty. Speculation is the risk- 
ing of capital in enterprises greater than we 
can control, or in enterprises whose elements 
are not at all calculable. All calculations 
of the future are uncertain ; but those which 
are based upon long experience approximate 

[* Monroe Edwards, a notorious forger. — Ed.] 



72 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



certainty, while those which are drawn by 
sagacity from probable events, are notori- 
ously unsafe. Unless, however, some 
venture, we shall forever tread an old and 
dull path ; therefore enterprise is allowed to 
pioneer new ways. The safe enterpriser 
explores cautiously, ventures at first a little, 
and increases the venture with the ratio of 
experience. A speculator looks out upon 
the new region, as upon a far-away land- 
scape, whose features are softened to 
beauty by distance ; upon a hope, he stakes 
that, which, if it wins, will make him ; and 
if it loses, will ruin him. When the alter- 
natives are victory, or utter destruction, a 
battle may, sometimes, still be necessary. 
But commerce has no such alternatives ; 
only speculation proceeds upon them. 

If the capital is borrowed, it is as dis- 
honest, upon such ventures, to risk, as to 
lose it. Should a man borrow a noble 
steed and ride among incitements which he 
knew would rouse up his fiery spirit to an 
uncontrollable height, and borne away with 
wild speed, be plunged over a precipice, 
his destruction might excite our pity, but 
could not alter our opinion of his dishon- 
esty. He borrowed property, and endan- 
gered it where he knew that it would be 
uncontrollable. 

If the capital be one's own, it can scarce- 



TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY 



73 



\y be risked and lost, without the ruin of 
other men. No man could blow up his 
store in a compact street, and destroy only 
his own. Men of business are, like threads 
of a fabric, woven together, and subject, 
to a great extent, to a common fate of 
prosperity or adversity. I have no right 
to cut off my hand ; I defraud myself, my 
family, the community, and God; for all 
these have an interest in that hand. Nei- 
ther has a man the right to throw away his 
property. He defrauds himself, his family, 
the community in which he dwells ; for all 
these have an interest in that property. If 
waste is dishonesty, then every risk, in pro- 
portion as it approaches it, is dishonest. 
To venture, without that foresight which 
experience gives, is wrong ; and if we can- 
not foresee, then we must not venture. 

Scheming speculation demoralizes hon- 
esty, and almost necessitates dishonesty. 
He who puts his own interests to rash 
ventures, will scarcely do better for others. 
The Speculator regards the weightiest affair 
as only a splendid game. Indeed, a Specu- 
lator on the exchange, and a Gambler at 
his table, follow one vocation, only with 
different instruments. One employs cards 
or dice, the other property. The one can 
no more foresee the result of his schemes, 
than the other what spots will come up on 



74 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



his dice ; the calculations of both are only 
the chances of luck. Both burn with un- 
healthy excitement ; both are avaricious of 
gains, but careless of what they win ; both 
depend more upon fortune than skill ; they 
have a common distaste for labor ; with each, 
right and wrong are only the accidents of a 
game; neither would scruple in any hour to 
set his whole being on the edge of ruin, 
and going over, to pull down, if possible, a 
hundred others. 

The wreck of such men leaves them with 
a drunkard's appetite, and a fiend's desper- 
ation. The revulsion from extravagant 
hopes, to a certainty of midnight darkness ; 
the sensations of poverty, to him who was 
in fancy just stepping upon a princely estate ; 
the humiliation of gleaning for cents, where 
he has been profuse of dollars ; the chagrin 
of seeing old competitors now above him, 
grinning down upon his poverty a malignant 
triumph ; the pity of pitiful men, and the 
neglect of such as should have been his 
friends, — and who were, while the sunshine 
lay upon his path, — all these things, like so 
many strong winds, sweep across the soul 
so that it cannot rest in the cheerless tran- 
quility of honesty, but casts up mire and 
dirt. How stately the balloon rises and 
sails over continents, as over petty land- 
scapes ! The slightest slit in its frail cover- 



TWELVE CAUSES OF DISHONESTY 



75 



ing sends it tumbling down, swaying widely, 
whirling and pitching hither and thither, 
until it plunges into some dark glen, out of 
the path of honest men, and too shattered 
to tempt even a robber. So have we seen 
a thousand men pitched down ; so now, in 
a thousand places may their wrecks be seen. 
But still other balloons are framing, and the 
air is full of victim-venturers. 

If our young men are introduced to life 
with distaste for safe ways, because the sure 
profits are slow ; if the opinion becomes 
prevalent that all business is great, only as 
it tends to the uncertain, the extravagant, 
and the romantic ; then we may stay our 
hand at once, nor waste labor in absurd ex- 
postulations of honesty. I had as lief preach 
humanity to a battle of eagles, as to urge 
honesty and integrity upon those who have 
determined to be rich, and to gain it by gam- 
bling stakes, and madmen's ventures. 

All the bankruptcies of commerce are 
harmless compared with a bankruptcy of 
public morals. Should the Atlantic ocean 
break over our shores, and roll sheer across 
to the Pacific, sweeping every vestige of 
cultivation, and burying our wealth, it would 
be a mercy, compared to that ocean-deluge 
of dishonesty and crime, which, sweeping 
over the whole land, has spared our wealth 
and taken our virtue. What are cornfields 



7 6 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEAT 



and vineyards, what are stores and manu- 
factures, and what are gold and silver, and 
all the precious commodities of the earth, 
among beasts ? — and what are men, bereft 
of conscience and honor, but beasts ? 

We will forget those things which are 
behind, and hope a more cheerful future. 
We turn to you, young men ! — All good 
men, all patriots, turn to watch your ad- 
vance upon the stage, and to implore you 
to be worthy of yourselves, and of your re- 
vered ancestry. Oh ! ye favored of Heaven ! 
with a free land, a noble inheritance of wise 
laws, and a prodigality of wealth in pros- 
pect, — advance to your possessions ! — May 
you settle down, as did Israel of old, a peo- 
ple of God in a promised and protected 
land ; — true to yourselves, true to your coun- 
try, and true to your God. 



SIX WARNINGS. 



The generation of the upright shall be blessed, wealth 
and riches shall be in his house. Ps. cxii. 2, 3. 

He that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them 
in the midst of his days, and at the end shall be a fool. 
Jer. xvii. II. 

TT7TIEN justly obtained, and rationally 
Y y used, riches are called a gift of God, an 
evidence of his favor, and a great re- 
ward. When gathered unjustly, and cor- 
ruptly used, wealth is pronounced a canker, a 
rust, a fire, a curse. There is no contradiction, 
then, when the Bible persuades to industry, 
and integrity, by a promise of riches ; and then 
dissuades from wealth, as a terrible thing, 
destroying soul and body. Blessings are 
vindictive to abusers, and kind to rightful 
users ; — they serve us, or rule us. Fire warms 
our dwelling, or consumes it. Steam serves 
man, and also destroys him. Iron, in the 
plough, the sickle, the house, the ship, is 
indispensable. The dirk, the assassin's 
knife, the cruel sword and the spear, are 
iron also. 

(77) 



78 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



The constitution of man, and of society, 
alike evinces the design of God. Both are 
made to be happier by the possession of 
riches ; — their full development and perfec- 
tion are dependent, to a large extent, upon 
wealth. Without it, there can be neither 
books nor implements ; neither commerce 
nor arts, neither towns nor cities. It is a 
folly to denounce that, a love of which God 
has placed in man by a constitutional fac- 
ulty ; that, with which he has associated 
high grades of happiness; that, which has 
motives touching every faculty of the mind. 
Wealth is an artist : by its patronage men 
are encouraged to paint, to carve, to design, 
to build and adorn : — A master-mechanic : 
and inspires man to invent, to discover, to 
apply, to forge, and to fashion : — A hus- 
bandman : and under its influence men rear 
the flock, till the earth, plant the vineyard, 
the field, the orchard, and the garden : — A 
manufacturer : and teaches men to card, 
to spin, to weave, to color and dress all use- 
ful fabrics : — A merchant : and sends forth 
ships, and fills warehouses with their re- 
turning cargoes gathered from every zone. 
It is the scholar's patron ; sustains his 
leisure, rewards his labor, builds the college, 
and gathers the library. 

Is a man weak ? — he can buy the strong. 
Is he ignorant ? — the learned will serve his 



SIX WARNINGS 



79 



wealth. Is he rude of speech ? — he may- 
procure the advocacy of the eloquent. The 
rich cannot buy honor, but honorable places 
they can; they cannot purchase nobility, 
but they may its titles. Money cannot buy 
freshness of heart, but it can every luxury 
which tempts to enjoyment. Laws are its 
body-guard, and no earthly power may 
safely defy it ; either while running in the 
swift channels of commerce, or reposing in 
the reservoirs of ancient families. Here is 
a wonderful thing, that an inert metal, 
which neither thinks, nor feels, nor stirs, can 
set the whole world to thinking, planning, 
running, digging, fashioning, and drives 
on the sweaty mass with never-ending 
labors ! 

Avarice seeks gold, not to build or buy- 
therewith ; not to clothe or feed itself; not 
to make.it an instrument of wisdom, of 
skill, of friendship, or religion. Avarice 
seeks it to heap it up ; to walk around the 
pile, and gloat upon it; to fondle, and court, 
to kiss and hug the darling stuff to the end 
of life, with the homage of idolatry. 

Pride seeks it ; — for it gives power, and 
place, and titles, and exalts its possessor 
above his fellows. To be a thread in the 
fabric of life, just like any other thread, 
hoisted up and down by the treadle, played 
across by the shuttle, and woven tightly 



80 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

into the piece, this may suit humility, but 
not pride. 

Vanity seeks it ; — what else can give it 
costly clothing, and rare ornaments, and 
stately dwellings, and showy equipage, and 
attract admiring eyes to its gaudy colors 
and costly jewels ? 

Taste seeks it ; — because by it, may be 
had whatever is beautiful, or refining, or in- 
structive. What leisure has poverty for 
study, and how can it collect books, manu- 
scripts, pictures, statues, coins, or curiosities ? 

Love seeks it ; — to build a home full of 
delights for father, wife or child ; and, wisest 
of all, 

Religion seeks it ; — to make it the mes- 
senger and servant of benevolence, to want, 
to suffering, and to ignorance. 

What a sight does the busy world pre- 
sent, as of a great workshop, where hope 
and fear, love and pride, and lust, 
and pleasure, and avarice, separate or 
in partnership, drive on the universal 
race for wealth : delving in the mine, dig- 
ging in the earth, sweltering at the forge, 
plying the shuttle, ploughing the waters; 
in houses, in shops, in stores, on the moun- 
tain-side, or in the valley ; by skill, by 
labor, by thought, by craft, by force, by 
traffic ; all men, in all places, by all labors, 
fair and unfair, the world around, busy, 



SIX WARNINGS 8 1 

busy ; ever searching for wealth that wealth 
may supply their pleasures. 

As every taste and inclination may re- 
ceive its gratification through riches, the 
universal and often fierce pursuit of it arises, 
not from the single impulse of avarice, but 
from the impulse of the whole mind; and 
on this very account, its pursuits should be 
more exactly regulated. Let me set up a 
warning over against the special dangers 
which lie along the road to riches. 

I. I warn you against thinking that 
riches necessarily confer happiness ; and 
poverty, unhappiness. Do not begin life 
supposing that you shall be heart-rich, when 
you are purse-rich. A man's happiness de- 
pends primarily upon his disposition ; if that 
be good, riches will bring pleasure ; but 
only vexation, if that be evil. To lavish 
money upon shining trifles, to make an idol 
of one's self for fools to gaze at, to rear 
mansions beyond our wants, to garnish 
them for display and not for use, to chatter 
through the heartless rounds of pleasure, 
to lounge, to gape, to simper and giggle : — 
can wealth make vanity happy by such 
folly? If wealth descends upon avarice, 
does it confer happiness ? It blights the 
heart, as autumnal fires ravage the prairies ! 
The eye glows with greedy cunning, con- 
science shrivels, the light of love goes 
6 



82 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

out, and the wretch moves amidst his coin 
no better, no happier than a loathsome rep- 
tile in a mine of gold. A dreary fire of 
self-love burns in the bosom of the avari- 
cious rich, as a hermit's flame in a ruined 
temple of the desert. The fire is kindled 
for no deity, and is odorous with no in- 
cense, but only warms the shivering an- 
chorite. 

Wealth will do little for lust, but to 
hasten its corruption. There is no more 
happiness in a foul heart, than there is 
health in a pestilent morass. Satisfaction 
is not made out of such stuff as fighting 
carousals, obscene revelry, and midnight 
orgies. An alligator, gorging or swollen 
with surfeit and basking in the sun, has the 
same happiness which riches bring to the 
man who eats to gluttony, drinks to 
drunkenness, and sleeps to stupidity. But 
riches indeed bless that heart whose 
almoner is benevolence. If the taste is 
refined, if the affections are pure, if con- 
science is honest, if charity listens to the 
needy, and generosity relieves them ; if the 
public-spirited hand fosters all that em- 
bellishes and all that ennobles society — 
then is the rich man happy. 

On the other hand, do not suppose that 
poverty is a waste and howling wilderness. 
There is a poverty of vice — mean, loath- 



SIX WARNINGS 



83 



some, covered with all the sores of de- 
pravity. There is a poverty of indolence— 
where virtues sleep, and passions fret and 
bicker. There is a poverty which despond- 
ency makes — a deep dungeon, in which the 
victim wears hopeless chains. May God 
save you from that ! There is a spiteful 
and venomous poverty, in which mean and 
cankered hearts, repairing; none of their 
own losses, spit at others' prosperity, and 
curse the rich, — themselves doubly cursed 
by their own hearts. 

But there is a contented poverty, in 
which industry and peace rule ; and a joy- 
ful hope, which looks out into another 
world where riches shall neither fly nor 
fade. This poverty may possess an inde- 
pendent mind, a heart ambitious of useful- 
ness, a hand quick to sow the seed of other 
men's happiness, and find its own joy in 
their enjoyment. If a serene age finds you 
in such poverty, it is such a wilderness, if it 
be a wilderness, as that in which God led 
his chosen people, and on which he rained 
every day a heavenly manna. 

If God open to your feet the way to 
wealth, enter it cheerfully ; but remember 
that riches will bless or curse you, as your 
own heart determines. But if, circum- 
scribed by necessity, you are still indigent, 
after all your industry, do not scorn pov- 



84 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

erty. There is often in the hut more dig- 
nity than in the palace ; more satisfaction 
in the poor man's scanty fare than in the 
rich man's satiety. 

II. Men are warned in the Bible against 
making haste to be rich. He that hast- 
eth to be rich hath an evil eye, and consider- 
eth not that poverty shall come upon him. 
This is spoken, not of the alacrity of enter- 
prise, but of the precipitancy of avarice. 
That is air evil eye which leads a man into 
trouble by incorrect vision. When a man 
seeks to prosper by crafty tricks instead of 
careful industry ; when a man's inordinate 
covetousness pushes him across all lines of 
honesty that he may sooner clutch the 
prize ; when gambling speculation would 
reap where it had not strewn ; when men 
gain riches by crimes — there is an evil eye, 
which guides them through a specious 
prosperity, to inevitable ruin. So depend- 
ent is success upon patient industry, that 
he who seeks it otherwise, tempts his own 
ruin. A young lawyer, unwilling to wait 
for that practice which rewards a good rep- 
utation, or unwilling to earn that reputation 
by severe application, rushes through all 
the dirty paths of chicane to a hasty pros- 
perity ; and he rushes out of it, by the 
dirtier paths of discovered villany. A 
young politician, scarcely waiting till the 



SIX WARNINGS 



85 



law allows his majority, sturdily begs for 
that popularity which he should have 
patiently earned.^ In the ferocious conflicts 
of political life, cunning, intrigue, falsehood, 
slander, vituperative violence, at first sus- 
tain his pretensions, and at last demolish 
them. It is thus in all the ways of traffic, 
in all the arts, and trades. That prosperity 
which grows like the mushroom, is as 
poisonous as the mushroom. Few men are 
destroyed ; but many destroy themselves. 

When God sends wealth to bless men he 
sends it gradually like a gentle rain. When 
God sends riches to punish men, they come 
tumultously, like a roaring torrent, tearing 
up landmarks and sweeping all before them 
in promiscuous ruin. Almost every evil 
which environs the path to wealth, springs 
from that criminal haste which substitutes 
adroitness for industry, and trick for toil. 

III. Let me warn you against covet- 
ousness. Thou shalt not covet, is the law 
by which God sought to bless a favorite 
people. Covetousness is greediness of 
money. The Bible meets it with significant 
woes (Hab. ii. 9), by God's hatred (Fs. x. 
3), by solemn warnings (Luke xii. 15), by 
denunciations (1 Cor. v. 10, 11 ; Isai. 
vii. 7), by exclusion from Heaven (1 Cor. vi. 
10). This pecuniary gluttony comes upon 
the competitors for wealth insidiously. At 



86 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

first, business is only a means of paying for 
our pleasures. Vanity soon whets the ap- 
petite for money, to sustain her parade and 
competition, to gratify her piques and jeal- 
ousies. Pride throws in fuel for a brighter 
flame. Vindictive hatreds often augment 
the passion, until the whole soul glows as 
a fervid furnace, and the body is driven as 
a boat whose ponderous engine trembles 
with the utmost energy of steam. 

Covetousness is unprofitable. It defeats 
its own purposes. It breeds restless dar- 
ing, where it is dangerous to venture. It 
works the mind to fever, so that its judg- 
ments are not cool, nor its calculations 
calm. Greed of money is like fire ; the 
more fuel it has, the hotter it burns. 
Everything conspires to intensify the heat. 
Loss excites by desperation, and gain by 
exhilaration. When there is fever in the 
blood, there is fire on the brain ; and 
courage turns to rashness, and rashness 
runs to ruin. 

Covetousness breeds misery. The sight 
of houses better than our own, of dress 
beyond our means, of jewels costlier than 
we may wear, of stately equipage, and rare 
curiosities beyond our reach, these hatch 
the viper brood of covetous thoughts ; vex- 
ing the poor — who would be rich ; torment- 
ing the rich — who would be richer. The 



SIX WARNINGS 



87 



covetous man pines to see pleasure ; is sad 
in the presence of cheerfulness ; and the 
joy of the world is his sorrow, because all 
the happiness of others is not his. I do not 
wonder that God abhors him (Ps. x. 3). He 
inspects his heart, as he would a cave full of 
noisome birds, or a nest of rattling reptiles, 
and loathes the sight of its crawling tenants. 
To the covetous man life is a nightmare, and 
God lets him wrestle with it as best he may. 
Mammon might build its palace on such a 
heart, and Pleasure bring all its revelry 
there, and Honor all its garlands — it would 
be like pleasures in a sepulchre, and garlands 
on a tomb. 

The creed of the greedy man is brief and 
consistent ; and unlike other creeds, is both 
subscribed and believed. The chief end of 
man is to glorify gold and enjoy it forever : 
life is a time afforded man to grow rich in : 
death, the winding up of speculations : heaven, 
a mart with golden streets : hell, a place 
where shiftless men are punished with ever- 
lasting poverty. 

God searched among the beasts for a fit 
emblem of contempt, to describe the end of 
a covetous prince : He shall be buried with 
the burial of an Ass, drawn and cast forth 
beyond the gates of Jerusalem (Jer. xxii. 19). 
He whose heart is turned to greediness, 
who sweats through life under the load of 



88 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

labor only to heap up money, and dies with- 
out private usefulness, or a record of public 
service, is no better, in God's estimation, 
than a pack-horse, — a mule, — an ass ; a crea- 
ture for burdens, to be beaten, and worked 
and killed, and dragged off by another like 
him, abandoned to the birds and forgotten. 

He is buried with the burial of an 
ass ! This is the miser's epitaph — and 
yours, young man ! if you earn it by covetous- 
ness ! 

IV. I warn you against selfishness. Of 
riches it is written : There is no good in them 
but for a man to rejoice and do good in his 
life. If men absorb their property, it parches 
the heart so that it will not give forth blos- 
soms and fruits, but only thorns and thistles. 
If men radiate and reflect upon others some 
rays of the prosperity which shines upon 
themselves, wealth is not only harmless, but 
full of advantage. 

The thoroughfares of wealth are crowded 
by a throng who jostle, and thrust, and con- 
flict, like men in the tumult of a battle. 
The rules which crafty old men breathe into 
the ears of the young are full of selfish 
wisdom ; — teaching them that the chief end 
of man is to harvest, to husband, and to 
hoard. Their life is made obedient to a 
scale of preferences graded from a sordid 
experience ; a scale which has penury for 



SIX WARNINGS 



80 



one extreme, and parsimony for the other ; 
and the virtues are ranked between them as 
they are relatively fruitful in physical thrift. 
Every crevice of the heart is caulked with 
costive maxims, so that no precious drop of 
wealth may leak out through inadvertent 
generosities. Indeed, generosity and all its 
company are thought to be little better than 
pilfering picklocks, against whose wiles the 
heart is prepared, like a coin-vault, with 
iron-clenched walls of stone, and impenetra- 
ble doors. Mercy, pity, and sympathy, are 
vagrant fowls ; and that they may not scale 
the fence between a man and his neighbors, 
their wings are clipped by the miser's master- 
maxim — Charity begins at home. It cer- 
tainly stays there. 

The habit of regarding men as dishonest 
rivals, dries up, also, the kindlier feelings. 
A shrewd trafficker must watch his fellows, 
be suspicious of their proffers, vigilant of 
their movements, and jealous of their 
pledges. The world's way is a very crooked 
way, and a very guileful one. Its travellers 
creep by stealth, or walk craftily, or glide in 
concealments, or appear in specious guises. 
He who stands out-watching among men, to 
pluck his advantage from their hands, or to 
lose it by their wiles, comes at length to 
regard all men as either enemies or instru- 
ments. Of course he thinks it fair to strip 



go LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

an enemy ; and just as fair to use an instru- 
ment. Men are no more to him than bales, 
boxes, or goods — mere matters of traffic. 
If he ever relaxes his commercial rigidity to 
indulge in the fictions of poetry, it is when, 
perhaps on Sundays or at a funeral, he talks 
quite prettily about friendship, and generos- 
ity, and philanthropy. The tightest ship 
may leak in a storm, and an unbartered 
penny may escape from this man, when the 
surprise of the solicitation gives no time for 
thought. 

The heart cannot wholly petrify without 
some honest revulsions. Opiates are ad- 
ministered to it. This business-man tells 
his heart that it is beset by unscrupulous 
enemies ; that beneficent virtues are doors to 
let them in ; that liberality is bread given to 
one's foes ; and selfishness only self-defence. 
At the same time, he enriches the future with 
generous promises. While he is getting 
rich, he cannot afford to be liberal ; but 
when once he is rich, ah ! how liberal he 
means to be ! — as though habits could be 
unbuckled like a girdle, and were not rather 
steel-bands riveted, defying the edge of any 
man's resolution, and clasping the heart 
with invincible servitude ! 

Thorough selfishness destroys or para- 
lyzes enjoyment. A heart made selfish by 
the contest for wealth is like a citadel 



SIX WARNINGS q! 

stormed in war. The banner of victory 
waves over dilapidated walls, desolate 
chambers, and magazines riddled with ar- 
tillery. Men, covered with sweat, and be- 
grimed with toil, expect to find joy in a 
heart reduced by selfishness to a smoulder- 
ing heap of ruins. 

I warn every aspirant for wealth against 
the infernal canker of selfishness. It will 
eat out of the heart with the fire of hell, or 
bake it harder than a stone. The heart of 
avaricious old age stands like a bare rock 
in a bleak wilderness, and there is no rod of 
authority, nor incantation of pleasure, which 
can draw from it one crystal drop to 
quench the raging thirst for satisfaction. 
But listen not to my words alone ; hear the 
solemn voice of God, pronouncing doom 
upon the selfish : Your riches are corrupted, 
and your garments are moth-eaten. Your 
gold and silver is cankered; and the rust 
of them shall be a zvitness against you, and 
shall eat your flesh as it zvere fire (James 
v. 2, 3). ' 

V. I warn you against seeking wealth by 
covert dishonesty. The everlasting plea 
of petty fraud or open dishonesty, is, its 
necessity or profitableness. 

It is neither necessary nor profitable. 
The hope is a deception, and the excuse a 
lie. The severity of competition affords no 



9 2 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



reason for dishonesty in word or deed. 
Competition is fair, but not all methods 
of competition. A mechanic may compete 
with a mechanic, by rising earlier, by greater 
industry, by greater skill, more punctuality, 
greater thoroughness, by employing better 
materials; by a more scrupulous fidelity to 
promises, and by facility in accommodation. 
A merchant may study to excel competi- 
tors, by a better selection of goods, by 
more obliging manners, by more rigid 
honesty, by a better knowledge of the mar- 
ket, by better taste in the arrangement of 
his goods. Industry, honesty, kindness, 
taste, genius and skill, are the only mate- 
rials of all rightful competition. 

But whenever you have exerted all your 
knowledge, all your skill, all your industry, 
with long-continued patience and without 
success, then, it is clear, not that you may 
proceed to employ trick and cunning, but 
that you must stop. God has put before 
you a bound which no man may overleap. 
There may be the appearance of gain on the 
knavish side of the wall of honor. Traps 
are always baited with food sweet to the 
taste of the intended victim ; and Satan is 
too crafty a trapper not to scatter the pitfall 
of dishonesty with some shining particles of 
gold. 

But what if fraud were necessary to per- 



SIX WARNINGS 



93 



manent success ? will you take success up- 
on such terms ? I perceive, too often, that 
young men regard the argument as ended, 
when they prove to themselves that they 
cannot be rich without guile. Very well ; 
then be poor. But if you prefer money to 
honor, you may well swear fidelity to the 
villain's law ! If it is not base and detestable 
to gain by equivocation, neither is it by ly- 
ing ; and if not by lying, neither is it by 
stealing ; and if not by stealing, neither by 
robbery or murder. Will you tolerate the 
loss of honor and honesty for the sake of 
profit ? For exactly this, Judas betrayed 
Christ, and Arnold his country. Because 
it is the only way to gain some pleasure, 
may a wife yield her honor ? — a politician 
sell himself? — a statesman barter his coun- 
sel ? — a judge take bribes? — a juryman 
forswear himself? — or a witness commit 
perjury? Then virtues are marketable 
commodities, and may be hung up, like 
meat in the shambles, or sold at auction to 
the highest bidder. 

Who can afford a victory gained by a 
defeat of his virtue? What prosperity can 
compensate the plundering of a man's heart ? 
A good name is rather to be chosen than 
great riches : sooner or later every man will 
find it so. 

With what dismay would Esau have 



94 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



sorrowed for a lost birthright, had he lost 
also the pitiful mess of pottage for which he 
sold it? With what double despair would 
Judas have clutched at death, if he had not 
obtained even the thirty pieces of silver 
which were to pay his infamy ? And with 
what utter confusion will all dishonest men, 
who were learning of the Devil to defraud 
other men, find at length, that he was giving 
his most finished lesson of deception, — by 
cheating them ! and making poverty and 
disgrace the only fruit of tlie lies and frauds 
which were framed for profit ! Getting 
treasure by a lying tongue is a vanity tossed 
to and fro of them that seek death. 

Men have only looked upon the beginning 
of a career when they pronounce upon the 
profitableness of dishonesty. Many a ship 
goes gaily out of harbor which never re- 
turns again. That only is a good voyage 
which brings liome the richly freighted ship. 
God explicitly declares that an inevitable 
curse of dishonesty shall fall upon the 
criminal himself, or upon his children : He 
that by usury, and unjust gain, increaseth 
his substance, he shall gather it for him that 
will pity the poor. His children are far 
from safety, and they are crushed in the gate. 
Neither is there any to deliver them : the 
robber sw allow eth up their substance. 

Iniquities, whose end is dark as midnight, 



SIX WARNINGS 



95 



are permitted to open bright as the morn- 
ing; the most poisonous bud unfolds with 
brilliant colors. So the threshold of per- 
dition is burnished till it glows like the 
gate of paradise. There is a way which 
seemeth right unto a man, but the ends there- 
of are the ways of death. This is dishon- 
esty described to the life. At first you 
look down upon a smooth and verdant 
path covered with flowers, perfumed with 
odors, and overhung with fruits and 
grateful shade. Its long perspective is 
illusive ; for it ends quickly in a preci- 
pice, over which you pitch into irretrievable 
ruin. 

For the sources of this inevitable disaster, 
we need look no further than the effect of 
dishonesty upon a man's own mind. The 
difference between cunning and wisdom, 
is the difference between acting by the cer- 
tain and immutable laws of nature, and act- 
ing by the shifts of temporary expedients. 
An honest man puts his prosperity upon the 
broad current of those laws which govern 
the world. A crafty man means to pry 
between them, to steer across them, to take 
advantage of them. An honest man steers 
by God's chart ; and a dishonest man 
by his own. Which is the most liable to 
perplexities and fatal mistakes of judgment ? 
Wisdom steadily ripens to the end; cun- 



9 6 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



ning is worm-bitten, and soon drops irom 
the tree. 

I could repeat the names of many men, 
(every village has such, and they swarm in 
cities,) who are skilful, indefatigable, but 
audaciously dishonest; and for a time they 
seemed going straight forward to the realm 
of wealth. I never knew a single one to 
avoid ultimate ruin. Men who act under 
dishonest passions, are like men riding fierce 
horses. It is not always with the rider 
when or where he shall stop. If for his sake, . 
the steed dashes wildly on while the road 
is smooth ; so, turning suddenly into a 
rough and dangerous way, the rider must 
go madly forward for the steed's sake, — 
now chafed, his mettle up, his eye afire, and 
beast and burden like a bolt speeding 
through the air, until some bound or sud- 
den fall tumble both to the ground^ — a 
crushed and mangled mass. 

A man pursuing plain ends by honest 
means may be troubled o?i every side, yet 
not distressed : perplexed, but not in despair : 
persecuted, but not forsaken : cast down, but 
not destroyed. But those that pursue their 
advantage by a round of dishonesties, when 
fear cometh as a desolation, and destruction 
as a whirlwind, when distress and anguish 
come upon them, . . . shall eat of the 
fruit of their own way, and be filled with 



SIX WARNINGS 



97 



their own devices ; for the turning away of 
the simple shall slay them ; and the prosper- 
ity of fools shall destroy them. 

VI. The Bible overflows with warnings 
to those who gain wealth by violent extor- 
tion, or by any flagrant villany. Some 
men stealthily slip from under them the 
possessions of the poor. Some beguile the 
simple and heedless of their patrimony. 
Some tyrannize over ignorance, and extort 
from it its fair domains. Some steal away 
the senses, and intoxicate the mind — the 
more readily and largely to cheat; some 
set their traps in all the dark places of 
men's adversity, and prowl for wrecks all 
along the shores on which men's fortunes 
go to pieces. Men will take advantage of 
extreme misery, to wring it with more 
griping tortures, and compel it to the ex- 
tremest sacrifices ; and stop only when no 
more can be borne by the sufferer, or noth- 
ing more extracted by the usurer. The 
earth is as full of avaricious monsters, as 
the tropical forests are of beasts of prey. 
But amid all the lions, and tigers, and 
hyenas, is seen the stately bulk of three 
huge Behemoths. 

The first Behemoth is that incarnate 

fiend who navigates the ocean to traffic in 

human misery and freight with the groans 

and tears of agony. Distant shores are 

7 



9 8 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



sought with cords and manacles ; villages 
surprised with torch and sword ; and the 
loathsome ship swallows what the sword 
and the fire have spared. By night and 
day the voyage speeds, and the storm spares 
wretches more relentless than itself. The 
wind wafts and the sun lights the path for 
a ship whose log is written in blood. Hid- 
eous profits, dripping red, even at this hour, 
lure these infernal miscreants to their re- 
morseless errands. The thirst of gold in- 
spires such courage, skill, and cunning vig- 
ilance, that the thunders of four allied 
navies cannot sink the infamous fleet. 

What wonder? Just such a Behemoth 
of rapacity stalks among us, and fattens on 
the blood of our sons. Men there are, 
who, without a pang or gleam of remorse, 
will coolly wait for character to rot, and 
health to sink, and means to melt, that they 
may suck up the last drop of the victim's 
blood. Our streets are full of reeling 
wretches whose bodies and manhood and 
souls have been crushed and put to the 
press, that monsters might wring out of 
them a wine for their infernal thirst. The 
agony of midnight massacre, the frenzy of 
the ship's dungeon, the living death of the 
middle passage, the wails of separation, and 
the dismal torpor of hopeless servitude — 
are these found only in the piracy of the 



SIX WARNINGS gg 

slave trade ? They all are among us ! worse 
assassinations ! worse dragging to a prison- 
ship! worse groans ringing from the fetid 
hold ! worse separations of families ! worse 
bondage of intemperate men, enslaved by 
that most inexorable of all task-masters — 
sensual habit ! 

The third Behemoth is seen lurking 
among the Indian savages, and bringing the 
arts of learning, and the skill of civilization, 
to aid in plundering the debauched bar- 
barian. The cunning, murdering, scalping 
Indian, is no match for the Christian white- 
man. Compared with the midnight knavery 
of men reared in schools, rocked by relig- 
ion, tempered and taught by the humane 
institutions of liberty and civilization, all 
the craft of the savage is twilight. Vast 
estates have been accumulated, without 
having an honest farthing in them. Our 
Penitentiaries might be sent to school to 
the Treaty-grounds and Council-grounds. 
Smugglers and swindlers might humble 
themselves in the presence of Indian traders. 
All the crimes against property known to 
our laws flourish with unnatural vigor ; 
and some, unknown to civilized villany. To 
swindle ignorance, to overreach simplicity, 
to lie without scruple to any extent, from 
mere implication down to perjury ; to tempt 
the savages to rob each other, and to re- 



IO o LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

ceive their plunder; to sell goods at incred- 
ible prices to the sober Indian, then to in- 
toxicate him, and steal them all back by a 
sham bargain, to be sold again, and stolen 
again; to employ falsehood, lust, threats, 
whisky, and even the knife and the pistol ; 
in short to consume the Indian's substance 
by every vice and crime possible to an un- 
principled heart inflamed with an insatiable 
rapacity, unwatched by Justice, and unre- 
strained by Law — this it is to be an Indian 
Trader. I would rather inherit the bowels 
of Vesuvius, or make my bed in Etna, than 
own those estates which have been scalped 
off from human beings as the hunter strips 
a beaver of its fur. Of all these, of all who 
gain possessions by extortion and robbery, 
never let yourself be envious ! I was envi- 
ous at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity 
of the wicked. Their eyes stand out with 
fatness : they have more than heart could 
wish. They are corrupt, and speak zvickedly 
concerning oppression. They have set their 
mouth against the heaven, and their tongue 
walketh through the earth. When I sought 
to know this, it was too painful for me, until 
I went into the sanctuary. Surely thou didst 
set them in slippery places ! thou castedst 
them down into destruction as in a moment ! 
They are utterly consumed with terrors. As 
a dream when one awake th. so, Lord! 



SIX WARNINGS I0I 

when thou awakest, thou shalt despise their 
image ! 

I would not bear their heart who have so 
made money, were the world a solid globe 
of gold, and mine. I would not stand for 
them in the judgment, were every star of 
heaven a realm of riches, and mine. I 
would not walk with them the burning 
marl of hell, to bear their torment, and 
utter their groans, for the throne of God 
itself. 

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole 
matter. Riches got by deceit, cheat no 
man so much as the getter. Riches bought 
with guile, God will pay for with vengeance. 
Riches got by fraud, are dug out of one's 
own heart, and destroy the mine. Unjust 
riches curse the owner in getting, in 
keeping, in transmitting. They curse 
his children in their father's memory, 
in their own wasteful habits, in drawing 
around them all bad men to be their com- 
panions. 

While I do not discourage your search 
for wealth, I warn you that it is not a cruise 
upon level seas, and under bland skies. 
You advance where ten thousand are broken 
in pieces before they reach the mart ; where 
those who reach it are worn out, by their 
labors, past enjoying their riches. You 
seek a land pleasant to the sight, but dan- 



102 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

gerous to the feet ; a land of fragrant winds, 
which lull to security ; of golden fruits, 
which are poisonous ; of glorious hues, 
which dazzle and mislead. 

You may be rich and be pure ; but it 
will cost you a struggle. You may be rich 
and go to heaven; but ten, doubtless, will 
sink beneath their riches, where one breaks 
through them to heaven. If you have 
entered this shining way, begin to look for 
snares and traps. Go not careless of your 
danger, and provoking it. See, on every 
side of you, how many there are who seal 
God's word with their blood : — 

They that will be rich, fall into temptation 
and a snare, and into many foolish and hurt- 
ful lusts, which drown men in destruction 
and perdition. For the love of Money is 
the root of all evil, which, while some have 
coveted after, they have erred from the faith, 
and pierced themselves through with many 
sorrows. 



THE PORTRAIT GALLERY 



My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not. 

Prov. i. 10. 

HE who is allured to embrace evil under 
some engaging form of beauty, or 
seductive appearance of good, is 
enticed. A man is tempted to what he 
knows to be sinful ; he is enticed where the 
evil appears to be innocent. The Enticer 
wins his way by bewildering the moral 
sense, setting false lights ahead of the 
imagination, painting disease with the hues 
of health, making impurity to glow like 
innocency, strewing the broad-road with 
flowers, lulling its travellers with soothing 
music, hiding all its chasms, covering its 
pitfalls, and closing its long perspective with 
the mimic glow of Paradise. 

The young are seldom tempted to out- 
right wickedness ; evil comes to them as an 
enticement. The honest generosity and 
fresh heart of youth would revolt from open 
meanness and undisguised vice. The Ad- 

0<>3) 



104 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



versary conforms his wiles to their nature. 
He tempts them to the basest deeds by 
beginning with innocent ones, gliding to 
more exceptionable, and finally, to positively 
wicked ones. All our warnings then must 
be against the vernal beauty of vice. Its 
autumn and winter none wish. It is my 
purpose to describe the enticement of par- 
ticular men upon the young. 

Every youth knows that there are danger- 
ous men abroad who would injure him by 
lying, by slander, by over-reaching and 
plundering him. From such they have 
little to fear, because they are upon their 
guard. Few imagine that they have any- 
thing to dread from those who have no 
designs against them ; yet such is the 
instinct of imitation, so insensibly does the 
example of men steal upon us and warp our 
conduct to their likeness, that the young 
often receive a deadly injury from men with 
whom they never spoke. As all bodies in 
nature give out or receive caloric until there 
is an equilibrium of temperature, so there is 
a radiation of character upon character. 
Our thoughts, our tastes, our emotions, our 
partialities, our prejudices, and finally, our 
conduct and habits, are insensibly changed 
by the silent influence of men who never 
once directly tempted us, or even knew the 
effect which they produced. I shall draw 



THE PORTRAIT GALLERY 



105 



for your inspection some of those dangerous 
men, whose open or silent enticement has 
availed against thousands, and will be 
exerted upon thousands more. 

I. The wit. It is sometimes said by- 
phlegmatic theologians that Christ never 
laughed, but often wept. I shall not quarrel 
with the assumption. I only say that men 
have within them a faculty of mirthfulness 
which God created. I suppose it was meant 
for use. Those who do not feel the impul- 
sion of this faculty, are not the ones to sit 
in judgment upon those who do. It would 
be very absurd for an owl in an ivy bush, to 
read lectures on optics to an eagle; or for a 
mole to counsel a lynx on the sin of sharp- 
sightedness. He is divinely favored who 
may trace a silver vein in all the affairs of 
life ; see sparkles of light in the gloomiest 
scenes ; and absolute radiance in those 
which are bright. There are in the clouds 
ten thousand inimitable forms and hues to be 
found nowhere else ; there are in plants 
and trees beautiful shapes and endless varie- 
ties of color ; there are in flowers minute 
pencillings of exquisite shade; in fruits a 
delicate bloom, — like a veil, making the face 
of beauty more beautiful ; sporting among 
the trees, and upon the flowers, are tiny 
insects — gems which glow like living 
diamonds. Ten thousand eyes stare full 



I0 6 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

upon these things and see nothing ; and yet 
thus the Divine Artist has finished his 
matchless work. Thus, too, upon all the 
labors of life, the events of each hour, the 
course of good or evil ; upon each action, 
or word, or attitude ; upon all the endless 
changes transpiring among myriad men, 
there is a delicate grace, or bloom, or 
sparkle, or radiance, which catches the eye 
of Wit, and delights it with appearances 
which are to the weightier matters of life, 
what odor, colors, and symmetry, are to the 
marketable and commercial properties of 
matter. 

A mind imbued with this feeling is full 
of dancing motes, such as we see moving in 
sunbeams when they pour through some 
shutter into a dark room ; and when the 
sights and conceptions of wit are uttered in 
words they diffuse upon others that pleasure 
whose brightness shines upon its own 
cheerful imagination. 

It is not strange that the Wit is a uni- 
versal favorite. All companies rejoice in 
his presence, watch for his words, repeat his 
language. He moves like a comet whose 
incomings and outgoings are uncontrollable. 
He astonishes the regular stars with the 
eccentricity of his orbit, and flirts his long tail 
athwart the heaven without the slightest mis- 
givings that it will be troublesome, and co- 



THE PORTRAIT GALLERY 



107 



quets the very sun with audacious familiarity. 
When wit is unperverted, it lightens labor, 
makes the very face of care to shine, diffuses 
cheerfulness among men, multiplies the 
sources of harmless enjoyment, gilds the 
dark things of life, and heightens the lustre 
of the brightest. If perverted, wit becomes 
an instrument of malevolence, it gives a 
deceitful coloring to vice, it reflects a sem- 
blance of truth upon error, and distorts the 
features of real truth by false lights. 

The Wit is liable to indolence by rely- 
ing upon his genius ; to vanity, by the 
praise which is offered as incense; to 
malignant sarcasm, to revenge his affronts; 
to dissipation, from the habit of exhilara- 
tion, and from the company which court 
him. The mere Wit is only a human 
bauble. He is to life what bells are to 
horses, not expected to draw the load, but 
only to jingle while the horses draw. 

The young often repine at their own na- 
tive dulness; and since God did not choose 
to endow them with this shining quality, 
they w r ill make it for themselves. Forth- 
with they are smitten with the itch of imi- 
tation. Their ears purvey to their mouth 
the borrowed jest ; their eyes note the Wit's 
fashion, and the awkward youth clumsily 
apes, in a side circle, the Wit's deft and grace- 
ful gesture, the smooth smile, the roguish 



io 8 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

twinkle, the sly look — much as Caliban 
would imitate Ariel. Every community is 
supplied with self-made Wits. One retails 
other men's sharp witticisms, as a Jew puts off 
thread-bare garments. Another roars over 
his own brutal quotations of Scripture. 
Another invents a witticism by a logical 
deduction of circumstances, and sniffs and 
giggles over the result as complacently as if 
other men laughed too. Others lie in wait 
around your conversation to trip up some 
word, or strike a light out of some sentance. 
Others fish in dictionaries ior pitiful puns ; — 
and all fulfil the prediction of Isaiah : Ye 
shall conceive chaff, and bring forth stubble. 

It becomes a mania. Each school has 
its allusions, each circle has its apish motion, 
each companionhood its park of wit-artillery; 
and we find street-wit, shop-wit, auction- 
wit, school-wit, fool's-wit, whisky-wit, stable- 
wit, and almost every kind of wit, but 
mother-wit ; — puns, quibbles, catches, 
would-be-jests, thread-bare stories, and 
gew-gaw tinsel, — everything but the real 
diamond, which sparkles simply because 
God made it so that it could not help spark- 
ling. Real, native mirthfulness is like a 
pleasant rill which quietly wells up in some 
verdant nook, and steals out from among 
reeds and willows noiselessly, and is seen 
far down the meadow, as much by the 



THE PORTRAIT GALLERY IO g 

fruitfulness of its edges in flowers, as by 
its own glimmering light. 

Let every one beware of the insensible 
effect of witty men upon him ; they gild 
lies, so that base coin may pass for true ; 
that which is grossly wrong, wit may make 
fascinating ; when no argument could per- 
suade you, the coruscations of wit may daz- 
zle and blind you ; when duty presses you, 
the threatenings of this human lightning 
may make you afraid to do right. Re- 
member that the very best office of wit, is 
only to lighten the serious labors of life ; 
that it is only a torch, by which men may 
cheer the gloom of a dark way. When it 
sets up to be your counsellor or your guide, 
it is the fool's fire, flitting irregularly and 
leading you into the quag or morass. The 
great Dramatist represents a witty sprite to 
have put an ass 5 head upon a man's shoul- 
ders ; beware that you do not let this mis- 
chievous sprite put an ape's head upon yours. 

If God has not given you this quick- 
silver, no art can make it ; nor need you 
regret it. The stone, the wood, and the 
iron are a thousand times more valuable to 
society than pearls and diamonds and rare 
gems ; and sterling sense, and industry, and 
integrity, are better a thousand times, in the 
hard work of living, than the brilliance of 

WIT. 



II0 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

II. There is a character which I shall 
describe as the Humorist. I do not em- 
ploy the term to designate one who indulges 
in that pleasantest of all wit — latent wit; 
but to describe a creature who conceals a 
coarse animalism under a brilliant, jovial 
exterior. The dangerous humorist is of a 
plump condition, evincing the excellent 
digestion of a good eater, and answering 
very well to the Psalmist's description : 
His eyes stand out with fatness ; he is not in 
trouble as other men are ; he has more than 
heart could wish, and his tongue walketh 
tlirough the earth. Whatever is pleasant in 
ease, whatever is indulgent in morals, what- 
ever is solacing in luxury; the jovial few, 
the convivial many, the glass, the cards, the 
revel, and midnight uproar, — these are his 
delights. His manners are easy and agree- 
able ; his face redolent of fun and good 
nature ; his whole air that of a man fond of 
the .utmost possible bodily refreshment. 
Withal, he is sufficiently circumspect and 
secretive of his course, to maintain a place 
in genteel society; for that is a luxury. 
He is not a glutton, but a choice eater. 
He is not a gross drinker, only a gentle- 
manly consumer of every curious compound 
of liquor. He has travelled ; he can tell 
you which, in every city, is the best bar, 
the best restaurateur, the best stable. He 



THE PORTRAIT GALLERY Iir 

knows every theatre, each actor ; particu- 
larly is he versed in the select morsels of 
the scandalous indulgence peculiar to each. 
He knows every race-course, every nag, 
the history of all the famous matches, and 
the pedigree of every distinguished horse. 
The whole vocabulary of pleasure is 
vernacular, — its wit, its slang, its watch- 
words, and blackletter literature. He is a 
profound annalist of scandal ; every stream 
of news, clear or muddy, disembogues 
into the gulf of his prodigious memory. 
He can tell you, after living but a week in 
a city, who gambles, when, for what sums, 
and with what fate; who is impure, who 
was, who is suspected, who is not suspected 
— but ought to be. He is a morbid anatomist 
of morals ; a brilliant flesh-fly — unerring: 
to detect taint 

Like other men, he loves admiration and 
desires to extend his influence. All these 
manifold accomplishments are exhibited 
before the callow young. That he may se- 
cure a train of useful followers, he is profuse 
of money ; and moves among them with an 
easy, insinuating frankness, a never-ceasing* 
gaiety, so spicy with fun, so diverting with 
stories, so full of little hits, sly innuendoes, 
or solemn wit, with now and then a rare 
touch of dexterous mimicry, and the whole 
so pervaded by the indescribable flavor, the 



II2 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

changing hues of humor, — that the young 
are bewildered with idolatrous admiration. 
What gay young man, who is old enough 
to admire himself and be ashamed of his 
parents, can resist a man so bedewed with 
humor, narrating exquisite stories with such 
mock gravity/with such slyness of mouth, 
and twinkling of the eye, with such gro- 
tesque attitudes, and significant gestures ? 
He is declared to be the most remarkable 
man in the world. Now take off this man's 
dress, put out the one faculty of mirth ful- 
ness, and he will stand disclosed without a 
single positive virtue ! With strong appe- 
tites deeply indulged, hovering perpetually 
upon the twilight edge of every vice; and 
whose wickedness is only not apparent, be- 
cause it is garnished with flowers and gar- 
lands ; who is not despised, only because 
his various news, artfully told, keep us in 
good humor with ourselves ! At one period 
of youthful life, this creature's influence 
supplants that of every other man. There 
is an absolute fascination in him which 
awakens a craving in the mind to be of his 
circle; plain duties become drudgery, home 
has no light ; life at its ordinary key is 
monotonous, and must be screwed up to 
the concert pitch of this wonderful genius ! 
As he tells his stories, so with a wretched 
grimace of imitation, apprentices will try to 



THE PORTRAIT GALLERY 



113 



tell them; as he gracefully swings through 
the street, they will roll; they will leer be- 
cause he stares genteelly ; he sips, they 
guzzle — and talk impudently, because he 
talks with easy confidence. He walks 
erect, they strut ; he lounges, they loll ; he 
is less than a man, and they become even 
less than he. Copper-rings, huge blotches 
of breast-pins, wild streaming handkerchiefs, 
jaunty hats, odd clothes, superfluous walk- 
ing-sticks, ill-uttered oaths, stupid jokes, 
and blundering pleasantries — these are the 
first fruits of imitation ! There are various 
grades of it, from the office, store, shop, 
street, clear down to the hostlery and stable. 
Our cities are filled with these juvenile 
nondescript monsters, these compounds of 
vice, low wit, and vulgarity. The original 
is morally detestable, and the counterfeit is 
a very base imitation of a very base thing ; 
the dark shadow of a very ugly substance. 
III. The Cynic. The Cynic is one who 
never sees a good quality in a man, and 
never fails to see a bad one. He is the 
human owl, vigilant in darkness and blind 
to light, mousing for vermin, and never 
seeing noble game. The Cynic puts all 
human actions into only two classes — openly 
bad, and secretly bad. All virtue and gener- 
osity and disinterestedness are merely the 
appearance of good, but selfish at the bottom. 
8 



114 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



He holds that no man does a good thing 
except for profit. Th^ effect of his con- 
versation upon your feelings is to chill and 
sear them ; to send you away sore and 
morose. His criticisms and innuendoes 
fall indiscriminately upon every lovely 
thing, like frost upon flowers. If a man is 
said to be pure and chaste, he will answer : 
Yes, in the day time. If a woman is pro- 
nounced virtuous, he will reply: yes, as yet. 
Mr. A. is a religious man : yes, on Sundays. 
Mr. B, has just joined the church : certainly ; 
the elections are coming on. The minister 
of the gospel is called an example of dili- 
gence : It is his trade. Such a man is 
generous: of other men's money. This man 
is obliging: to lull suspicion and cheat you. 
That man is upright: because he is green. 
Thus his eye strains out every good quality 
and takes in only the bad. To him religion 
is hypocrisy, honesty a preparation for fraud, 
virtue only want of opportunity, and unde- 
niable purity, asceticism. The live-long 
day he will coolly sit with sneering lip, 
uttering sharp speeches in the quietest 
manner, and in polished phrase, transfixing 
every character which is presented: His 
words are softer than oil, yet are they draivn 
swords. 

All this, to the young, seems a wonder- 
ful knowledge of human nature ; they honor 



THE PORTRAIT GALLERY 



"5 



a man who appears to have found out 
mankind. They begin to indulge them- 
selves in flippant sneers ; and with super- 
cilious brow, and impudent tongue, wagging 
to an empty brain, call to naught the wise, 
the long-tried, and the venerable. 

I do believe that man is corrupt enpugh ; 
but something of good has survived his 
wreck ; something of evil religion has re- 
strained, and something partially restored ; 
yet, I look upon the human heart as a 
mountain of fire. I dread its crater. I 
tremble when I see its lava roll the fiery 
stream. Therefore, I am the more glad, 
if upon the old crust of past eruptions, I can 
find a single flower springing up. So far 
from rejecting appearances of virtue in the 
corrupt heart of a depraved race, I am eager 
to see their light as ever mariner was to 
see a star in a stormy night. 

Moss will grow upon gravestones ; the 
ivy will cling to the mouldering pile; the 
mistletoe springs from the dying branch; 
and, God be praised, something green, 
something fair to the sight and grateful to 
the heart, will yet twine around and grow 
out of the seams and cracks of the desolate 
temple of the human heart ! 

Who could walk through Thebes, Pal- 
myra, or Petraea, and survey the wide waste 
of broken arches, crumbled altars, fallen 



H6 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

pillars, effaced cornices, toppling walls, and 
crushed statues, with no feelings but those 
of contempt ? Who, unsorrowing, could 
see the stork's nest upon the carved pillar, 
satyrs dancing on marble pavements, and 
scorpions nestling where beauty once 
dwelt, and dragons the sole tenants of 
royal palaces ? Amid such melancholy 
magnificence, even the misanthrope might 
weep ! If here and there an altar stood 
unbruised, or a graven column unblem- 
ished, or a statue nearly perfect, he might 
well feel love for a man-wrought stone, 
so beautiful, when all else is so dreary and 
desolate. Thus, though man is as a deso- 
late city, and his passions are as the wild 
beasts of the wilderness howling in kings' 
palaces, yet he is God's workmanship, and 
a thousand touches of exquisite beauty 
remain. Since Christ hath put his sov- 
ereign hand to restore man's ruin, many 
points are remoulded, and the fair form of 
a new fabric already appears growing from 
the ruins, and the first faint flame is glim- 
mering upon the restored altar. 

It is impossible to indulge in such 
habitual severity of opinion upon our 
fellow-men, without injuring the tenderness 
and delicacy of our own feelings. A man 
will be what his most cherished feelings are. 
If he encourage a noble generosity, every 



THE PORTRAIT GALLERY 



117 



feeling will be enriched by it ; if he nurse 
bitter and envenomed thoughts, his own 
spirit will absorb the poison ; and he will 
crawl among men as a burnished adder, 
whose life is mischief, and whose errand 
is death. 

Although experience should correct the 
indiscriminate confidence of the young, no 
experience should render them callous to 
goodness wherever seen. He who hunts 
for flowers, will find flowers ; and he who 
loves weeds, may find weeds. Let it be 
remembered, that no man, who is not him- 
self mortally diseased, will have a relish for 
disease in others. A swollen wretch, 
blotched all over with leprosy, may grin 
hideously at every wart or excrescence upon 
beauty. A wholesome man will be pained 
at it, and seek not to notice it. Reject, 
then, the morbid ambition of the Cynic, or 
cease to call yourself a man ! 

IV. I fear that few villages exist without 
a specimen of the Libertine. 

His errand into this world is to explore 
every depth of sensuality, and collect upon 
himself the foulness of every one. He is 
proud to be vile ; his ambition is to be viler 
than other men. Were we not confronted 
almost daily by such wretches, it would be 
hard to believe that any could exist, to 
whom purity and decency were a burden, 



H8 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

and only corruption a delight. This creature 
has changed his nature, until only that 
which disgusts a pure mind pleases his. 
He is lured by the scent of carrion. His 
coarse feelings, stimulated by gross ex- 
citants, are insensible to delicacy. The 
exquisite bloom, the dew and freshness of 
the flowers of the heart which delight both 
good men and God himself, he gazes upon, 
as a Behemoth would gaze enraptured upon 
a prairie of flowers. It is so much pasture. 
The forms, the odors, the hues are only a 
mouthful for his terrible appetite. There- 
fore, his breath blights every innocent thing. 
He sneers at the mention of purity, and 
leers in the very face of Virtue, as though 
she were herself corrupt, if the truth were 
known. He assures the credulous dis- 
ciple that there is no purity ; that its 
appearances are only the veils which cover 
indulgence. Nay, he solicits praise for the 
very openness of his evil ; and tells the 
listener that all act as he acts, but only 
few are courageous enough to own it. But 
the uttermost parts of depravity are laid 
open only when several such monsters 
meet together, and vie with each other, 
as we might suppose shapeless mud-mon- 
sters disport in the slimiest ooze of the 
ocean. < They dive in fierce rivalry which 
shall reach the most infernal depth, and 



THE PORTRAIT GALLERY 



II 9 



bring up the blackest sediment. It makes 
the blood of an honest man run cold, to 
hear but the echo of the shameless rehears- 
als of their salacious enterprises. Each 
strives to tell a blacker tale than the other. 
When the abomination of their actual life 
is not damnable enough to satisfy the am- 
bition of their unutterable corruption, they 
devise, in their imagination, scenes yet 
more flagrant; swear that they have per- 
formed them, and when they separate, each 
strives to make his lying boastings true. It 
would seem as if miscreants so loathsome 
would have no power of temptation upon 
the young. Experience shows that the 
worst men are, often, the most skilful in 
touching the springs of human action. A 
young man knows little of life ; less of 
himself. He feels in his bosom the various 
impulses, wild desires, restless cravings 
he can hardly tell for what, a sombre mel- 
ancholy when all is gay, a violent exhilara- 
tion when others are sober. These wild 
gushes of feeling, peculiar to youth, the 
sagacious tempter has felt, has studied, has 
practised upon, until he can sit before that 
most capacious organ, the human mind, 
knowing every stop, and all the combina- 
tions, and competent to touch any note 
through the diapason. As a serpent 
deceived the purest of mortals, so now a 



I2 o LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

beast may mislead their posterity. He 
begins afar off. He decries the virtue of 
all men ; studies to produce a doubt that 
any are under self-restraint. He unpacks 
his filthy stories, plays off the fire-works 
of his corrupt imagination- — its blue-lights, 
its red-lights, and green-lights, and sparkle- 
spitting lights ; and edging in upon the 
yielding youth, who begins to wonder at 
his experience, he boasts his first exploits, 
he hisses at the purity of women ; he 
grows yet bolder, tells more wicked deeds, 
and invents worse even than he ever per- 
formed, though he has performed worse 
than good men ever thought of. All 
thoughts, all feelings, all ambition, are 
merged in one and that the lowest, vilest, 
most detestable ambition. 

Had I a son of years, I could, with thanks- 
giving, see him go down to the grave, 
rather than fall into the maw of this most 
besotted devil. The plague is mercy, the 
cholera is love, the deadliest fever is re- 
freshment to man's body, in comparison 
with this epitome and essence of moral dis- 
ease. He lives among men, Hell's ambas- 
sador with full credentials ; nor can we con- 
ceive that there should be need of any other 
fiend to perfect the works of darkness, while 
he carries his body among us, stuffed with 
every pestilent drug of corruption. The 



THE PORTRAIT GALLERY I2 i 

heart of every virtuous young man should 
loathe him ; if he speaks, you should as 
soon hear a wolf bark. Gather around you 
the venomous snake, the poisonous toad, 
the fetid vulture, the prowling hyena, and 
their company would be an honor to you 
above his ; for they at least remain within 
their own nature ; but he goes out of his 
nature that he may become more vile than 
it is possible for a mere animal to be. 

He is hateful to religion, hateful to virtue, 
hateful to decency, hateful to the coldest 
morality. The stenchful ichor of his dis- 
solved heart has flowed over every feeling 
of his nature, and left them as the 
burning lava leaves the garden, the orchard, 
and the vineyard. And it is a wonder that 
the bolt of God which crushed Sodom does 
not slay him. It is a wonder that the earth 
does not refuse the burden and open and 
swallow him up. I do not fear that the 
young will be undermined by his direct as- 
saults. But some will imitate, and their 
example will be again freely imitated, and 
finally, a remote circle of disciples will 
spread the diluted contagion among the 
virtuous. This man will be the fountain- 
head, and though none will come to drink 
at a hot spring, yet further down along the 
stream it sends out, will be found many 
scooping from its waters. 



122 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



V. I have described the devil in his na- 
tive form, but he sometimes appears as an 
angel of light. There is a polished Liber- 
tine, in manners studiously refined, in taste 
faultless; his face is mild and engaging; 
his words drop as pure as newly-made 
honey. In general society, he would rather 
attract regard as a model of purity, and sus- 
picion herself could hardly look askance 
upon him. Under this brilliant exterior, 
his heart is like a sepulchre, full of all un- 
clean ness. Contrasted with the gross lib- 
ertine, it would not be supposed that he had 
a thought in common with him. If his 
heart could be opened to our eyes, as it is 
to God's, we should perceive scarcely dis- 
similar feeling in respect to appetite. Pro- 
fessing unbounded admiration of virtue in 
general, he leaves not in private a point 
untransgressed. His reading has culled 
every glowing picture of amorous poets, 
every tempting scene of loose dramatists, 
and looser novelists. Enriched by these, 
his imagination, like a rank soil, is over- 
grown with a prodigal luxuriance of poison- 
herbs and deadly flowers. Men, such as 
this man is, frequently aspire to be the cen- 
sors of morality. They are hurt at the injudi- 
cious reprehensions of vice from the pulpit ! 
They make great outcry when plain words are 
employed to denounce base things. They are 



THE PORTRAIT GALLERY 



123 



astonishingly sensitive and fearful lest good 
men should soil their hands with too much 
meddling with evil. Their cries are not the 
evidence of sensibility to virtue, but of too 
lively a sensibility to vice. Sensibility is, 
often, only the fluttering of an impure heart. 
At the very time that their voice is ringing 
an alarm against immoral reformations, they 
are secretly skeptical of every tenet of vir- 
tue, and practically unfaithful to every one. 
Of these two libertines, the most refined is 
the more dangerous. The one is a rattle- 
snake which carries its warning with it ; the 
other, hiding his burnished scales in 
the grass, skulks to perform unsuspected 
deeds in darkness. The one is the visible 
fog and miasm of the morass ; the other is 
the serene air of a tropical city, which, though 
brilliant, is loaded with invisible pestilence. 
The Politician. If there be a man on 
earth whose character should be framed of 
the most sterling honesty, and whose con- 
duct should conform to the most scrupulous 
morality, it is the man who administers pub- 
lic affairs. The most romantic notions of 
integrity are here not extravagant. Asun- 
der our institutions, public men will be, 
upon the whole, fair exponents of the char- 
acter of their constituents, the plainest way 
to secure honest public men, is to inspire 
those who make them, with a right under- 



124 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



standing of what political character ought 
to be. Young men should be prompted to 
discriminate between the specious, and the 
real ; the artful, and the honest ; the wise, 
and the cunning; the patriotic, and the pre- 
tender. I will sketch — 

VI. The Demagogue. The lowest of 
politicians is that man who seeks to gratify 
an invariable selfishness by pretending to 
seek the public good. For a profitable 
popularity he accommodates himself to all 
opinions, to all dispositions, to every side, 
and to each prejudice. He is a mirror, 
with no face of its own, but a smooth sur- 
face from which each man of ten thousand 
may see himself reflected. He glides from 
man to man, coinciding with their views, 
pretending their feelings, simulating their 
tastes : with this one, he hates a man ; with 
that one, he loves the same man ; he favors 
a law, and he dislikes it; he approves, and 
opposes ; he is on both sides at once, and 
seemingly wishes that he could be on one 
side more than both sides. He attends 
meetings to suppress intemperance, — but at 
elections makes every grog-shop free to all 
drinkers. He can with equal relish plead 
most eloquently for temperance, or toss off 
a dozen glasses in a dirty groggery. He 
thinks that there is a time for everything, 
and therefore, at one time he swears and 



THE PORTRAIT GALLERY 



125 



jeers and leers with a carousing crew ; and 
at another time, having happily been con- 
verted, he displays the various features of 
devotion. Indeed, he is a capacious Chris- 
tian ; an epitome of faith. He piously asks 
the class-leader, of the welfare of his 
charge, for he was always a Methodist and 
always shall be, — until he meets a Presby- 
terian ; then he is a Presbyterian, old-school 
or new, as the case requires. However, as 
he is not a bigot, he can afford to be a 
Baptist, in a good Baptist neighborhood, 
and with a wink he tells the zealous elder, 
that he never had one of his children bap- 
tized, not he ! He whispers to the Re- 
former that he abhors all creeds but Bap- 
tism and the Bible. After all this, room 
will be found in his heart for the fugitive 
sects also, which come and go like clouds 
in a summer sky. His flattering attention 
at church edifies the simple-hearted 
preacher, who admires that a plain sermon 
should make a man whisper amen ! and 
weep. Upon the stump his tact is no less 
rare. He roars and bawls with courageous 
plainness, on points about which all agree : 
but on subjects where men differ, his mean- 
ing is nicely balanced on a pivot that it 
may dip either way. He depends for suc- 
cess chiefly upon humorous stories. A 
glowing patriot a-telling stories is a danger- 



I2 6 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

ous antagonist ; for it is hard to expose the 
fallacy of a hearty laugh, and men con- 
vulsed with merriment are slow to perceive 
in what way an argument is a reply to a 
story. 

Perseverance, effrontery, good nature, 
and versatile cunning have advanced many 
a bad man higher than a good man could 
attain. Men will admit that he has not a 
single moral virtue ; but he is smart. We 
object to no man for amusing himself at 
the fertile resources of the politician here 
painted ; for sober men are sometimes 
pleased with the grimaces and mischievous 
tricks of a versatile monkey ; but would it 
not be strange indeed if they should select 
him for a ruler, or make him an exemplar 
to their sons ? 

VII. I describe next a more respectable 
and more dangerous politician — the Party 
Man. He has associated his ambition, his 
interests, and his affections with a party. 
He prefers, doubtless, that his side should 
be victorious by the best means, and under 
the championship of good men ; but rather 
than lose the victory, he will consent to any 
means, and follow any man. Thus, with a 
general desire to be upright, the exigency 
of his party constantly pushes him to dis- 
honorable deeds. He opposes fraud by 
craft ; lie, by lie ; slander, by counter-as- 



THE PORTRAIT GALLERY 



I2JT 



persion. To be sure it is wrong to mis- 
state, to distort, to suppress or color facts ; 
it is wrong to employ the evil passions ; to 
set class against class ; the poor against the 
rich, the country against the city, the farmer 
against the mechanic, one section against 
another section. But his opponents do it, 
and if they will take advantage of men's 
corruption, he must, or lose by his virtue. 
He gradually adopts two characters, a per- 
sonal and a political character. All the req- 
uisitions of his conscience he obeys in his 
private character ; all the requisitions of his 
party, he obeys in his political conduct. la 
one character he is a man of principle ; in 
the other, a man of mere expedients. As 
a man he means to be veracious, honest, 
moral ; as a politician, he is deceitful, cun- 
ning , u n s c r u p u 1 o u s , — anything fo r pa rty . As 
a man, he abhors the slimy demagogue ; 
as a politician, he employs him as a scav- 
enger. As a man, he shrinks from the 
flagitiousness of slander ; as a politician, he 
permits it, smiles upon it in others, rejoices 
in the success gained by it. As a man, 
he respects no one who is rotten in heart ; 
as a politician, no man through whom vic- 
tory may be gained can 'be too bad. As a 
citizen, he is an apostle of temperance ; as 
a politician, he puts his shoulder under the 
men who deluge their track with whisky,, 



I2 8 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

marching a crew of brawling patriots, pug- 
naciously drunk, to exercise the freeman's 
noblest franchise, — the vote. As a citizen, 
he is considerate of the young, and coun- 
sels them with admirable wisdom ; then, as 
a politician, he votes for tools, supporting 
for the magistracy worshipful aspirants 
scraped from the ditch, the grog-shop, and 
the brothel ; thus saying by deeds which 
the young are quick to understand : " I 
jested, when I warned you of bad company ; 
for you perceive none worse than those 
whom I delight to honor." For his religion 
he will give up all his secular interests ; 
but for his politics he gives up even his re- 
ligion. He adores virtue, and rewards vice. 
Whilst bolstering up unrighteous measures, 
and more unrighteous men, he prays for the 
advancement of religion, and justice, and 
honor ! I would to God that his prayer 
might be answered upon his own political 
head ; for never was there a place where 
such blessings were more needed ! I 
am puzzled to know what will happen 
at death to this politic Christian, but 
most unchristian politician. Will both 
of his characters go heavenward together? 
If the strongest prevails, he will certainly go 
to hell. If his weakest, (which is his 
Christian character,) is saved, what will be- 
come of his political character ? Shall he be 



THE PORTRAIT GALLERY X2 g 

sundered in two, as Solomon proposed to 
divide the contested infant ? If this style of 
character were not flagitiously wicked, it 
would still be supremely ridiculous — but it 
is both. Let young men mark these 
amphibious exemplars to avoid their in- 
fluence. The young have nothing to gain 
from those who are saints in religion and 
morals, and Machiavels in politics; who 
have partitioned off their heart, invited 
Christ into one half, and Belial into the 
other. 

It is wisely said, that a strictly honest 
man who desires purely the public good, 
who will not criminally flatter the people, 
nor take part in lies, or party-slander, nor 
descend to the arts of the rat, the weasel, 
and the fox, cannot succeed in politics. It 
is calmly said by thousands that one cannot 
be a politician and a Christian. Indeed, a 
man is liable to downright ridicule if he 
speaks in good earnest of a scrupulously 
honest and religiously moral politician. I 
regard all such representations as false. 
We are not without men whose career is a 
refutation of the slander. It poisons the 
community to teach this fatal necessity of 
corruption in a course which so many must 
pursue. It is not strange, if such be the 
popular opinion, that young men include 
the sacrifice of strict integrity as a neces- 
9 



I30 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

sary element of a political life, and calm- 
ly agree to it, as to an inevitable misfor- 
tune, rather than to a dark and voluntary 
crime. 

Only if a man is an ignorant heathen, can 
he escape blame for such a decision ! A 
young man, at this day, in this land, who 
can coolly purpose a life of most unmanly 
guile, who means to earn his bread and 
fame by a sacrifice of integrity, is one who 
requires only temptation and opportunity to 
become a felon. What a heart has that 
man, who can stand in the very middle of 
the Bible, with its transcendent truths rais- 
ing their glowing fronts on every side of 
him, and feel no inspiration but that of 
immorality and meanness! He knows that 
for him have been founded the perpetual 
institutions of religion ; for him prophets 
have spoken, miracles been wrought, heaven 
robbed of its Magistrate, and the earth made 
sacred above all planets as the Redeemer's 
burial-place ; — he knows it all, and plunges 
from this height to the very bottom of cor- 
ruption ! He hears that he is immortal, and 
despises the immortality ; that he is a son 
of God, and scorns the dignity ; an heir of 
heaven, and infamously sells his heirship, 
and himself, for a contemptible mess of 
loathsome pottage ! Do not tell me of any 
excuses. It is a shame to attempt an 



THE PORTRAIT GALLERY 



13* 



excuse ! If there were no religion, if that 
vast sphere, out of which glow all the super- 
eminent truths of the Bible, was a mere 
emptiness and void, yet, methinks the very 
idea of Fatherland, the exceeding precious- 
ness of the Laws and Liberties of a great 
people, would enkindle such a high and 
noble enthusiasm, that all baser feelings 
would be consumed ! But if the love of 
country, a sense of character, a manly 
regard for integrity, the example of our 
most illustrious men, the warnings of 
religion and all its solicitations, and the pros- 
pect of the future, — dark as Perdition to the 
bad, and light as Paradise to the good, — 
cannot inspire a young man to anytKing 
higher than a sneaking, truckling, dodging 
scramble for fraudulent fame and dishonest 
bread, it is because such a creature has never 
felt one sensation of manly virtue ; — it is 
because his heart is a howling wilderness, 
inhospitable to innocence. 

Thus have I sketched a few of the char- 
acters which abound in every community ; 
dangerous, not more by their direct tempta- 
tions, than by their insensible influence. 
The sight of their deeds, of their temporary 
success, their apparent happiness, relaxes 
the tense rigidity of a scrupulous honesty, 
inspires a ruinous liberality of sentiment 
toward vice, and breeds the thoughts of evil ; 



132 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



and evil thoughts are the cockatrice's 
eggs, hatching into all bad deeds. 

Remember, if by any of these you are 
enticed to ruin, you will have to bear it 
alone ! They are strong to seduce, but 
heartless to sustain their victims. They 
will exhaust your means, teach you to 
despise the God of your fathers, lead you 
into every sin, go with you while you afford 
them any pleasure or profit, and then, when 
the inevitable disaster of wickedness begins 
to overwhelm you, they will abandon whom 
they have debauched. When, at length, 
death gnaws at your bones and knocks at 
your heart ; when staggering, and worn out, 
yoi5r courage wasted, your hope gone, your 
purity, and long, long ago your peace — will 
he who first enticed your steps, now serve 
your extremity with one office of kindness ? 
Will he stay your head? — cheer your dying 
agony with one word of hope ? — or light 
the way for your coward steps to the grave ? 
— or weep when you are gone ? — or send 
one pitiful scrap to your desolate family? 
What reveller wears crape for a dead 
drunkard ? — what gang of gamblers ever 
intermitted a game for the death of a com- 
panion ? — or went on kind missions of relief 
to broken-down fellow-gamblers ? What 
harlot weeps for a harlot ? — what debauchee 
mourns for a debauchee? They would 



THE PORTRAIT GALLERY 



135 



carouse at your funeral, and gamble on your 
coffin. If one flush more of pleasure were 
to be had by it, they would drink shame 
and ridicule to your memory out of your 
own skull, and roar in bacchanal-revelry 
over your damnation ! All the shameless 
atrocities of wicked men are nothing to 
their heartlessness toward each other when 
broken-down. As I have seen worms 
writhing on a carcass, overcrawling each 
other, and elevating their fiery heads in 
petty ferocity against each other, while all 
were enshrined in the corruption of a com- 
mon carrion, — I have thought, ah! shame- 
ful picture of wicked men tempting each 
other, abetting each other, until calamity 
overtook them, and then fighting and 
devouring or abandoning each other, with- 
out pity, or sorrow, or compassion, or 
remorse. Evil men of every degree will use 
you, flatter you, lead you on until you are 
useless ; then, if the virtuous do not pity 
you, or God compassionate, you are without 
a friend in the universe. 

My son, if simiers entice thee, consent thou 
not. If they say, Come with us y . . . we shall 
find all precious substance, zve shall fill our 
houses with spoil : cast in thy lot among us ; 
let us all have one purse : my son, walk not 
thou in the way with them ; refrain thy feet 



*34 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



from their path : for their feet run to evil, 
and make haste to shed blood, . . . and they 
lay in wait for their own blood, they lurk 
privily for their own lives \ 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING 



Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took 
his garments and made four parts, to every soldier a 
part, and also his coat. Now the coat was without 
seam, woven from the top throughout. They said 
therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it, but 
cast lots for it, whose it shall be. These things 
therefore the soldiers did. 

I HAVE condensed into one account the 
separate parts of this gambling trans- 
action as narrated by each evangelist. 
How marked in every age is a Gambler's 
character! The enraged priesthood of 
ferocious sects taunted Christ's dying 
agonies ; the bewildered multitude, accus- 
tomed to cruelty, could shout ; but no 
earthly creature, but a Gambler, could be so 
lost to all feeling as to sit down coolly 
under a dying man to wrangle for his gar- 
ments, and arbitrate their avaricious differ- 
ences by casting dice for his tunic, with 
hands spotted with his spattered blood, 
warm and yet undried upon them. The 
descendants of these patriarchs of gambling, 

(■35) 



I36 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

however, have taught us that there is noth- 
ing possible to hell, uncongenial to these, 
its elect saints. In this lecture it is my 
disagreeable task to lead your steps down 
the dark path to their cruel haunts, there to 
exhibit their infernal passions, their awful 
ruin, and their ghastly memorials. In this 
house of darkness, amid fierce faces gleam- 
ing with the fire of fiercer hearts, amid oaths 
and groans and fiendish orgies, ending in 
murders and strewn with sweltering 
corpses, — do not mistake, and suppose 
yourself in Hell, — you are only in its pre- 
cincts and vestibule. 



Gambling is the staking or winning of 
property upon mere hazard. The husband- 
man renders produce for his gains ; the 
mechanic renders the product of labor, and 
skill for his gains ; the gambler renders for 
his gain the sleights of useless skill, or 
more often, downright cheating. Betting 
is gambling ; there is no honest equivalent 
to its gains. Dealings in fancy-stocks are 
oftentimes sheer gambling, with all its 
worst evils. Profits so earned are no better 
than the profits of dice, cards, or hazard. 
When skill returns for its earnings a use- 
ful service, as knowledge, beneficial amuse- 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING 



137 



merits, or profitable labor, it is honest com- 
merce. The skill of a pilot in threading a 
narrow channel, the skill of a lawyer in 
threading a still more intricate one, are as 
substantial equivalents for a price received, 
as if they were merchant goods or agricul- 
tural products. But all gains of mere skill 
which result in no real benefit, are gambling 
gains. 

Gaming, as it springs from a principle of 
our nature, has, in some form, probably 
existed in every age. We trace it in 
remote periods and among the most bar- 
barous people. It loses none of its fascina- 
tions among a civilized people. On the 
contrary, the habit of fierce stimulants, the 
jaded appetite of luxury, and the satiety of 
wealth, seem to invite the master-excitant. 
Our land, not apt to be behind in good or 
evil, is full of gambling in all its forms — 
the gambling of commerce, the gambling of 
bets and wagers, and the gambling of games 
of hazard. There is gambling in refined 
circles, and in the lowest ; among the mem- 
bers of our national government, and of our 
state governments. Thief gambles with 
thief, in jail; the judge who sent them 
there, the lawyer who prosecuted, and the 
lawyer who defended them, often gamble 
too. This vice, once almost universally 
prevalent among the Western bar, and still 



138 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



too frequently disgracing its members, is, 
however, we are happy to believe, decreas- 
ing. In many circuits, not long ago, and 
in some now, the judge, the jury, and the 
bar, shuffled cards by night, and law by 
day — dealing out money and justice alike. 
The clatter of dice and cards disturbs your 
slumber on the boat, and rings drowsily 
from the upper rooms of the hotel. This 
vice pervades the city, extends over every 
line of travel, and infests the most moral 
districts. The secreted lamp dimly lights 
the apprentices to their game ; with unsus- 
pected disobedience, boys creep out of their 
beds to it ; it goes on in the store close by 
the till ; it haunts the shop. The scoun- 
drel in his lair, the scholar in his room ; the 
pirate on his ship, gay women at parties ; 
loafers on the street-corner, public function- 
aries in their offices ; the beggar under the 
hedge, the rascal in prison, and some pro- 
fessors of religion in the somnolent hours 
of the Sabbath, — waste their energies by 
the ruinous excitement of the game. 
Besides these players, there are troops of 
professional gamblers, troops of hangers-on, 
troops of youth to be drawn in. An inex- 
perienced eye would detect in our peaceful 
towns no signs of this vulture-flock ; — so in 
a sunny day, when all cheerful birds are 
singing merrily, not a buzzard can be seen ; 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING 



1 39 



but let a carcass drop, and they will push 
forth their gaunt heads from their gloomy 
roosts, and come flapping from the dark 
woods to speck the air, and dot the ground 
with their numbers. 

The universal prevalence of this vice is a 
reason for parental vigilance ; and a reason 
of remonstrance from the citizen, the parent, 
the minister of the gospel, the patriot, and 
the press. I propose to trace its opening, 
describe its subjects, and detail its effects. 

A young man, proud of freedom, anxious 
to exert his manhood, has tumbled his 
Bible, and sober books, and letters of coun- 
sel, into a dark closet. He has learned 
various accomplishments, to flirt, to boast, 
to swear, to fight, to drink. He has let 
every one of these chains be put around 
him, upon the solemn promise of Satan that 
he would take them off whenever he 
wished. Hearing of the artistic feats of 
eminent gamblers, he emulates them. So, 
he ponders the game. He teaches what he 
has learned to his shopmates, and feels 
himself their master. As yet he has never 
played for stakes. It begins thus : Peeping 
into a book-store, he watches till the sober 
customers go out ; then slips in, and with 
assumed boldness, not concealing his 
shame, he asks for cards, buys them, and 
hastens out. The first game is to pay for 



I40 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



the cards. After the relish of playing for a 
stake, no game can satisfy them without a 
stake. A few nuts are staked ; then a bottle 
of wine; an oyster-supper. At last they 
can venture a sixpence in actual money — 
just for the amusement of it. I need go 
no further — whoever wishes to do anything 
with the lad, can do it now. If properly 
plied, and gradually led, he will go to any 
length, and stop only at the gallows. Do 
you doubt it? let us trace him a year or 
two further on. 

With his father's blessing, and his 
mother's tears, the young man departs 
from home. He has received his patri- 
mony, and embarks for life and indepen- 
dence. Upon his journey he rests at a city; 
visits the " school of morals ; " lingers in 
more suspicious places; is seen by a 
sharper ; and makes his acquaintance. The 
knave sits by him at dinner ; gives him the 
news of the place, and a world of advice ; 
cautions him against sharpers ; inquires if 
he has money, and charges him to keep it 
secret ; offers himself to make with him the 
rounds of the town, and secure him from 
imposition. At length, that he may see all, 
he is taken to a gaming-house, but, with 
apparent kindness, warned not to play. 
He stands by to see the various fortunes of 
the game; some, forever losing; some, 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING 



HI 



touch what number they will, gaining piles 
of gold. Looking in thirst where wine is 
free. A glass is taken ; another of a better 
kind ; next the best the landlord has, and 
two glasses of that. A change comes over 
the youth ; his exhilaration raises his 
courage, and lulls his caution. Gambling 
seen, seems a different thing from gambling 
painted by a pious father ! Just then his 
friend remarks that one might easily double 
his money by a few ventures, but that it 
was, perhaps, prudent not to risk. Only 
this was needed to fire his mind. What ! 
only prudence between me and gain? 
Then that shall not be long ! He stakes ; 
he wins. Stakes again ; wins again. 
Glorious ! I am the lucky man that is to 
break the bank! He stakes, and wins 
again. His pulse races ; his face burns ; his 
blood is up, and fear gone. He loses ; loses 
again ; loses all his winnings ; loses more. 
But fortune turns again ; he wins anew. He 
has now lost all self-command. Gains ex- 
cite him, and losses excite him more. He 
doubles his stakes ; then trebles them — and 
all is swept He rushes on, puts up his 
whole purse, and loses the whole ! Then 
he would borrow ; no man will lend. He 
is desperate, he will fight at a word. He is 
led to the street, and thrust out. The cool 
breeze which blows upon his fevered cheek, 



I4 2 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

wafts the slow and solemn stroke of the 
clock, — one, — two, — three, — four; four of 
the morning ! Quick work of ruin ! — an in- 
nocent man destroyed in a night ! He 
staggers to his hotel, remembers as he 
enters it, that he has not even enough to 
pay his bill. It now flashes upon him that 
his friend, who never had left him for an 
hour before, had stayed behind where his 
money is, and, doubtless, is laughing over 
his spoils. His blood boils with rage. But 
at length comes up the remembrance of 
home; a parent's training and counsels for 
more than twenty years, destroyed in a 
night ! " Good God ! what a wretch I have 
been ! I am not fit to live. I cannot go 
home. I am a stranger here. Oh ! that I 
were dead ! Oh ! that I had died before I 
knew this guilt, and were lying where my 
sister lies ! Oh God ! Oh God ! my head 
will burst with agony ! " He stalks his 
lonely room with an agony which only the 
young heart knows in its first horrible 
awakening to remorse — when it looks de- 
spair full in the face, and feels its hideous 
incantations tempting him to suicide. Sub- 
dued at length by agony, cowed and weak- 
ened by distress, he is sought again by 
those who plucked him. Cunning to sub- 
vert inexperience, to raise the evil passions, 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING i^ 

and to allay the good, they make him their 
pliant tool. 

Farewell, young man ! I see thy steps 
turned to that haunt again ! I see hope 
lighting thy face ; but it is a lurid light, and 
never came from heaven. Stop before that 
threshold ! — turn, and bid farewell to 
home ! — farewell to innocence ! — farewell to 
venerable father and aged mother ! — the next 
step shall part thee from them all forever. 
And now henceforth be a mate to thieves, 
a brother to corruption. Thou hast made 
a league with death, and unto death shalt 
thou go. 

Let us here pause, to draw the likeness 
of a few who stand con-picuous in that 
vulgar crowd of gamblers, with which here- 
after he will consort. The first is a taciturn, 
quiet man. No one knows when he comes 
into town, or when he leaves. No man 
hears of his gaining ; for he never boasts, 
nor reports his luck. He spends little for 
parade ; his money seems to go and come 
only through the game. He reads none, 
converses none, is neither a glutton nor a 
hard drinker; he sports few ornaments, and 
wears plain clothing. Upon the whole, he 
seems a gentlemanly man ; and sober citi- 
zens say, " his only fault is gambling.'' 
What then is this " only fault?" In his 
heart he has the most intense and consum- 



I4 4 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

ing lust of play. He is quiet because 
every passion is absorbed in one ; and that 
one burning at the highest flame. He 
thinks of nothing else, cares only for this. 
All other things, even the hottest lusts of 
other men, are too cool to be temptations 
to him ; so much deeper is the style of his 
passions. He will sit upon his chair, and 
no man shall see him move for hours, ex- 
cept to play his cards. He sees none come 
in, none go out. Death might groan on 
one side of the room, and marriage might 
sport on the other, — he would know nei- 
ther. Every created influence is shut out ; 
one thing only moves him — the game; and 
that leaves not one pulse of excitability 
unaroused, but stirs his soul to the very 
dregs. 

Very different is the roistering gamester. 
He bears a jolly face, a glistening eye 
something watery through watching and 
drink. His fingers are manacled in rings ; 
his bosom glows with pearls and diamonds. 
He learns the time which he wastes from a 
watch full gorgeously carved, (and not 
with the most modest scenes,) and slung 
around his neck by a ponderous golden 
chain. There is not so splendid a fellow to 
be seen sweeping through the streets. The 
landlord makes him welcome — he will bear 
a full bill. The tailor smiles like May — he 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING 



145 



will buy half his shop. Other places bid 
him welcome — he will bear large steal- 
ings. 

Like the Judge, he makes his circuit, but 
not for justice; like the Preacher, he has 
his appointments, but not for instruction. 
His circuits are the race-courses, the crowd- 
ed capital, days of general convocation, 
conventions, and mass-gatherings. He will 
flame on the race-track, bet his thousands, 
and beat the ring at swearing, oaths vernacu- 
lar, imported, simple, or compound. The 
drinking-booth smokes when he draws in 
his welcome suit. Did you see him only 
by day, flaming in apparel, jovial and free- 
hearted at the Restaurateur or Hotel, you 
would think him a Prince let loose — a cross 
between Prince Hal and Falstaff. 

But night is his day. These are mere ex- 
ercises, and brief prefaces to his real accom- 
plishments. He is a good fellow, who 
dares play deeper ; he is wild indeed, who 
seems wilder ; and he is keen indeed, who 
is sharper than he is, after all this show of 
frankness. No one is quicker, slyer, and 
more alert at a game. He can shuffle the 
pack till an honest man would as soon 
think of looking for a particular drop of 
water in the ocean, as for a particular card 
in any particular place. Perhaps he is igno- 
rant which is at the top and which at the 
10 



146 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



bottom I At any rate, watch him closely, 
or you will get a lean hand and he a fat 
one. A plain man would think him a 
wizard or the devil. When he touches a 
pack they seem alive, and acting to his 
will rather than his touch. He deals them 
like lightning, they rain like snow-flakes, 
sometimes one, sometimes two, if need be 
four or five together, and his hand hardly 
moved. If he loses, very well, he laughs ; 
if he gains, he only laughs a little more. 
Full of stories, full of songs, full of wit, 
full of roistering spirit — yet do not trespass 
too much upon his good nature with insult ! 
All this outside is only the spotted hide 
which covers the tiger. He who provokes 
this man, shall see what lightning can 
break out of a summer-seeming cloud ! 

These do not fairly represent the race of 
gamblers, — conveying too favorable an 
impression. There is one, often met on 
Steamboats, travelling solely to gamble. 
He has the servants, or steward, or some 
partner, in league with him, to fleece every 
unwary player whom he inveigles to a game. 
He deals falsely; heats his dupe to madness 
by drink, drinking none himself; watches 
the signal of his accomplice telegraphing 
his opponent's hand ; at a stray look, he 
will slip your money off and steal it. To 
cover false playing, or to get rid of paying 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING 



H7 



losses, he will lie fiercely, and swear up- 
roariously, and break up the play to fight 
with knife or pistol — first scraping the table 
of every penny. When the passengers are 
asleep, he surveys the luggage, to see what 
may be worth stealing ; he pulls a watch 
from under the pillow of one sleeper ; fum- 
bles in the pockets of another ; and gathers 
booty throughout the cabin. Leaving the 
boat before morning, he appears at some 
village hotel, a magnificent gentleman, a 
polished traveller, or even a distinguished 
nobleman ! 

There is another gambler, cowardly, sleek, 
stealthy, humble, mousing, and mean — a 
simple blood-sucker. For money, he will be 
a tool to other gamblers; steal for them, 
and from them ; he plays the jackal, and 
searches victims for them, humbly satisfied 
to pick the bones afterward. Thus, (to em- 
ploy his own language,) he ropes in the in- 
experienced young, flatters them, teaches 
them, inflames their passions, purveys to 
their appetites, cheats them, debauches them, 
draws them down to his own level, and then 
lords it over them in malignant meanness. 
Himself impure, he plunges others into las- 
civiousness ; and with a train of reeking 
satellites, he revolves a few years in the orbit 
of the game, the brothel, and the doctor's 
shop ; then sinks and dies : the world is 



I4 8 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

purer, and good men thank God that he is 
gone. 

Besides these, time would fail me to 
describe the ineffable dignity of a gambling 
judge; the cautious, phlegmatic lawyer, 
gambling from sheer avarice; the broken- 
down and cast-away politician, seeking in 
the game the needed excitement, and a 
fair field for all the -base tricks he once 
played off as a patriot ; the pert, sharp, 
keen, jockey-gambler; the soaked, obese, 
plethoric, wheezing, bacchanal ; and a crowd 
of ignoble worthies, wearing all the badges 
and titles of vice, throughout its base 
peerage. 

A detail of the evils of gambling should 
be preceded by an illustration of that con- 
stitution of mind out of which they mainly 
spring — I mean its excitability. The 
body is not stored with a fixed amount of 
strength, nor the mind with a uniform 
measure of excitement; but both are 
capable, by stimulation, of expansion of 
strength or feeling, almost without limit. 
Experience shows, that within certain 
bounds, excitement is healthful and neces- 
sary, but beyond this limit, exhausting and 
destructive. Men are allowed to choose 
between moderate but long-continued ex- 
citement, and intense but short-lived ex- 
citement. Too generally they prefer the 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING 



149 



latter. To gain this intense thrill, a thou- 
sand methods are tried. The inebriate ob- 
tains it by drink and drugs ; the politician, 
by the keen interest of the civil campaign; 
the young by amusements which violently 
inflame and gratify their appetites. When 
once this higher flavor of stimulus has been 
tasted, all that is less becomes vapid and 
disgustful. A sailor tries to live on shore; 
a few weeks suffice. To be sure, there is 
no hardship, or cold, or suffering; but 
neither is there the strong excitement of 
the ocean, the gale, the storm, and the 
world of strange sights. The politician 
perceives that his private affairs are de- 
ranged, his family neglected, his character 
aspersed, his feelings exacerbated. When 
men hear him confess that his career is a 
hideous waking dream, the race vexatious, 
and the end vanity, they wonder that he 
clings to it ; but he knows that nothing but 
the fiery wine which he has tasted will rouse 
up that intense excitement, now become 
necessary to his happiness. For this 
reason, great men often cling to public 
office with all its envy, jealousy, care, toil, 
hates, competitions, and unrequited fidelity; 
for these very disgusts, and the perpetual 
struggle, strike a deeper chord of excite- 
ment than is possible to the gentler touches 
of home, friendship and love. Here too is 



ISO 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



the key to the real evil of promiscuous 
novel-reading, to the habit of reverie and 
mental romancing. None of life's common 
duties can excite to such wild pleasure as 
these ; and they must be continued, or the 
mind reacts into the lethargy of fatigue and 
ennui. It is upon this principle that men 
love pain ; suffering is painful to a specta- 
tor; but in tragedies, at public executions, 
at pugilistic combats, at cock-fightings, 
horse-races, bear-baitings, bull-fights, gladi- 
atorial shows, it excites a jaded mind as 
nothing else can. A tyrant torments for 
the same reason that a girl reads her tear- 
bedewed romance, or an inebriate drinks 
his dram. No longer susceptible even to 
inordinate stimuli, actual moans, and 
shrieks, and the writhing of utter agony, 
just suffice to excite his worn-out sense, 
and inspire, probably, less emotion than 
ordinary men have in listening to a tragedy 
or reading a bloody novel. 

Gambling is founded upon the very 
worst perversion of this powerful element 
of our nature. It heats every part of the 
mind like an oven. The faculties which 
produce calculation, pride of skill, of 
superiority, love of gain, hope, fear, jeal- 
ousy, hatred, are absorbed in the game, 
and exhilarated, or exacerbated by victory 
or defeat. These passions are, doubtless, 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING 



151 



excited in men by the daily occurrences of 
life; but then they are transient, and coun- 
teracted by a thousand grades of emotion, 
which rise and fall like the undulations of 
. the sea. But in gambling there is no inter- 
mission, no counteraction. The whole 
mind is excited to the utmost, and concen- 
trated at its extreme point of excitation 
for hours and days, with the additional 
waste of sleepless nights, profuse drinking, 
and other congenial immoralities. Every 
other pursuit becomes tasteless ; for no 
ordinary duty has in it a stimulus which 
can scorch a mind which now refuses to 
burn without blazing, or to feel an interest 
which is not intoxication. The victim of 
excitement is like a mariner who ventures 
into the edge of a whirlpool for a motion 
more exhilarating than plain sailing. He 
is unalarmed during the first few gyrations, 
for escape is easy. But each turn sweeps 
him further in ; the power augments, the 
speed becomes terrific as he rushes toward 
the vortex ; all escape now hopeless. A 
noble ship went in ; it is spit out in broken 
fragments, splintered spars, crushed masts, 
and cast up for many a rood along the 
shore. The specific evils of gambling 
may now be almost imagined. 

I. It diseases the mind, unfitting it for the 
duties of life. Gamblers are seldom indus- 



152 



LECTURES 7X> YOUNG MEN 



trious men in any useful vocation. A 
gambling mechanic finds his labor less 
relishful as his passion for play increases. 
He grows unsteady, neglects his work, 
becomes unfaithful to promises ; what he 
performs he slights. Little jobs seem little 
enough ; he desires immense contracts, 
whose uncertainty has much the excitement 
of gambling — and for the best of reasons; 
and in the pursuit of great and sudden 
profits, by wild schemes, he stumbles over 
into ruin, leaving all who employed or 
trusted him in the rubbish of his specula- 
tions. 

A gambling lawyer, neglecting the drudg- 
ery of his profession, will court its exciting 
duties. To explore authorities, compare 
reasons, digest, and write, — this is tiresome. 
But to advocate, to engage in fiery contests 
with keen opponents, this is nearly as good 
as gambling. Many a ruined client has 
cursed the law, and cursed a stupid jury, 
and cursed everybody for his irretrievable 
loss, except his lawyer, who gambled all 
night when he should have prepared the 
case, and came half asleep and debauched 
into court in the morning to lose a good 
case mismanaged, and snatched from his 
gambling hands by the art of sober op- 
ponents. 

A gambling student, if such a thing can 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING 



153 



be, withdraws from thoughtful authors to 
the brilliant and spicy ; from the pure 
among these, to the sharp and ribald ; from 
all reading about depraved life, to seeing; 
from sight to experience. Gambling vitiates 
the imagination, corrupts the tastes, destroys 
the industry — for no man will drudge for 
cents, who gambles for dollars by the hun- 
dred ; or practise a piddling economy, 
while, with almost equal indifference, he 
makes or loses five hundred in a night. 

II. For a like reason, it destroys all 
domestic habits and affections. Home is a 
prison to an inveterate gambler; there is no 
air there that he can breathe. For a mo- 
ment he may sport with his children, and 
smile upon his wife; but his heart, its 
strong passions, are not there. A little 
branch-rill may flow through the family, 
but the deep river of his affections flows 
away from home. On the issue of a game, 
Tacitus narrates that the ancient Germans 
would stake their property, their wives, their 
children, and themselves. What less than 
this is it, when a man will stake that prop- 
erty which is to give his family bread, and 
that honor which gives them place and rank 
in society ? 

When playing becomes desperate gam- 
bling, the heart is a hearth where all the fires 
of gentle feelings have smouldered to ashes ; 



154 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



and a thorough-paced gamester could rattle 
dice in a charnel-house, and wrangle for his 
stakes amid murder and pocket gold drip- 
ping with the blood of his own kindred. 

III. Gambling is the parent and com- 
panion of every vice which pollutes the 
heart, or injures society. 

It is a practice so disallowed among 
Christians, and so excluded by mere moral- 
ists, and so hateful to industrious and thriv- 
ing men, that those who practise it are shut 
up to themselves ; unlike lawful pursuits, it 
is not modified or restrained by collision 
with others. Gamblers herd with gamblers. 
They tempt and provoke each other to all 
evil, without affording one restraint, and 
without providing the counterbalance of a 
single virtuous impulse. They are like 
snakes coiling among snakes, poison and 
poisoning ; like plague-patients, infected and 
diffusing infection ; each sick and all con- 
tagious. It is impossible to put bad men 
together and not have them grow worse. 
The herding of convicts promiscuously, 
produced such a fermentation of depravity, 
that, long ago, legislators forbade it. When 
criminals, out of jail, herd together by 
choice, the same corrupt nature will doom 
them to growing loathsomeness, because of 
increasing wickedness. 

IV. It is a provocative of thirst. The 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING 



155 



bottle is almost as needful as the card, the 
ball, or the dice. Some are seduced to 
drink ; some drink for imitation, at first, and 
fashion. When super-excitements, at inter- 
vals, subside, their victim cannot bear the 
deathlike gloom of the reaction ; and, by 
drugs or liquor, wind up their system to the 
glowing point again. Therefore, drinking is 
the invariable concomitant of the theatre, 
circus, race-course, gaming-table, and of all 
amusements which powerfully excite all but 
the moral feelings. When the double fires 
of dice and brandy blaze under a man, he 
will soon be consumed. If men are found 
who do not drink, they are the more notice- 
able because exceptions. 

V. It is, even in its fairest form, the almost 
inevitable cause of dishonesty. Robbers have 
robbers' honor ; thieves have thieves' law ; 
and pirates conform to pirates' regulations. 
But where is there a gambler's code ? One 
law there is, and this is not universal, pay 
your gambling debts. But on the wide ques- 
tion, how is it fair to win — what law is 
there ? What will shut a man out from a 
gambler's club ? May he not discover his 
opponent's hand by fraud ? May not a con- 
cealed thread, pulling the significant one ; — 
one, two ; or one, two, three ; or the sign of 
a bribed servant or waiter, inform him, and 
yet his standing be fair? May he not 



i S 6 



LECTURES TO YOUNG ME 1ST 



cheat in shuffling, and yet be in full orders 
and canonical ? May he not cheat in deal- 
ing, and yet be a welcome gambler ? — may 
he not steal the money from your pile by 
laying his hands upon it, just as any other 
thief would, and yet be an approved 
gambler? May not the whole code be 
stated thus : Pay what you lose, get what 
you can, and in any way you can I I am told, 
perhaps, that there are honest gamblers, 
gentlemanly gamblers. Certainly ; there 
are always ripe apples before there are 
rotten. Men always begin before they end ; 
there is always an approximation before 
there is contact. Players will play truly till 
they get used to playing untruly ; will be 
honest, till they cheat ; will be honorable, 
till they become base ; and when you have 
said all this, what does it amount to but this, 
that men who really gamble, really cheat; 
and that they only do not cheat, who are 
not yet real gamblers? If this mends the 
matter, let it be so amended. I have spoken 
of gamesters only among themselves ; this 
is the least part of the evil ; for who is con- 
cerned when lions destroy bears, or wolves 
devour wolf-cubs, or snakes sting vipers? 
In respect to that department of gambling 
which includes the roping-in of strangers, 
young men, collecting-clerks, and unsuspect- 
ing green-hands, and robbing them, I have 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING 



157 



no language strong enough to mark down 
its turpitude, its infernal rapacity. After 
hearing many of the scenes not unfamiliar 
to every gambler, I think Satan might be 
proud of their dealings, and look up to them 
with that deferential respect, with which one 
monster gazes upon a superior. There is 
hot even the expectation of honesty. Some 
scullion-herald of iniquity decoys the un- 
wary wretch into the secret room ; he is 
tempted to drink ; made confident by the 
specious simplicity of the game; allowed to 
win; and every bait and lure and blind is 
employed — then he is plucked to the skin 
by tricks which appear as fair as honesty it- 
self. The robber avows his deed, does it 
openly ; the gambler sneaks to the same 
result under skulking pretences. There is 
a frank way, and a mean way of doing a 
wicked thing. The gambler takes the 
meanest way of doing the dirtiest deed. 
The victim's own partner is sucking his 
blood ; it is a league of sharpers, to get his 
money at any rate ; and the wickedness is 
so unblushing and unmitigated, that it 
gives, af last, an instance of what the deceit- 
ful human heart, knavish as it is, is ashamed 
to try to cover or conceal ; but confesses with 
helpless honesty, that it is fraud, cheating, 
stealing, robbery, — and nothing else. 

If I walk the dark street, and a perish- 



158 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



ing, hungry wretch meets me and bears off 
my purse with but a single dollar, the whole 
town awakes ; the officers are alert, the 
myrmidons of the law scout, and hunt, and 
bring in the trembling culprit to stow him 
in the jail. But a worse thief may meet 
me, decoy my steps, and by a greater dis- 
honesty, filch ten thousand dollars, — and 
what then ? The story spreads, the sharpers 
move abroad unharmed, no one stirs. It is 
the day's conversation ; and like a sound it 
rolls to the distance, and dies in an echo. 

Shall such astounding iniquities be vom- 
ited out amidst us, and no man care ? Do 
we love our children, and yet let them walk 
in a den of vipers ? Shall we pretend to 
virtue, and purity, and religion, and yet 
make partners of our social life, men whose 
heart has conceived such damnable deeds, 
and whose hands have performed them ? 
Shall there be even in the eye of religion 
no difference between the corrupter of youth 
and their guardian ? Are all the lines and 
marks of morality so effaced, is the nerve 
and courage of virtue so quailed by the 
frequency and boldness of flagitious crimes, 
that men, covered over with wickedness, 
shall find their iniquity no obstacle to their 
advancement among a Christian people. 

In almost every form of iniquity there is 
some shade or trace of good. We have in 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING 



159 



gambling a crime standing alone — dark, 
malignant, uncompounded wickedness ! It 
seems in its full growth a monster without 
a tender mercy, devouring its own offspring 
without one feeling but appetite. A game- 
ster, as such, is the cool, calculating, essen- 
tial spirit of concentrated avaricious selfish- 
ness. His intellect is a living thing, quick- 
ened with double life for villany ; his heart 
is steel of fourfold temper. When a man 
begins to gamble he is as a noble tree full 
of sap, green with leaves, a shade to beasts, 
and a covert to birds. When one becomes 
a thorough gambler, he is like that tree 
lightning-smitten, rotten in root, dry in 
branch, and sapless ; seasoned hard and 
tough ; nothing lives beneath it, nothing on 
its branches, unless a hawk or a vulture 
perches for a moment to whet its beak, and 
fly screaming away for its prey. 

To every young man who indulges in the 
least form of gambling, I raise a warning 
voice ! Under the specious name of amuse- 
ment, you are laying the foundation of 
gambling. Playing is the seed which comes 
up gambling. It is the light wind which 
brings up the storm. It is the white frost 
which preludes the winter. You are mis- 
taken, however, in supposing that it is 
harmless in its earliest beginnings. Its ter- 
rible blight belongs, doubtless, to a later 



!6o LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

stage ; but its consumption of time, its 
destruction of industry, its distaste for the 
calmer pleasures of life, belong to the 
very beginning. You will begin to play 
with every generous feeling. Amusement 
will be the plea. At the beginning the 
game will excite enthusiasm, pride of skill, 
the love of mastery, and the love of money. 
The love of money, at first almost imper- 
ceptible, at last will rule out all the rest, — 
like Aaron's rod, — a serpent, swallowing 
every other serpent. Generosity, enthu- 
siasm, pride and skill, love of mastery, will 
be absorbed in one mighty feeling, — the 
savage lust of lucre. 

There is a downward climax in this sin. 
The opening and ending are fatally con- 
nected, and drawn toward each other with 
almost irresistible attraction. If gambling- 
is a vortex, playing is the outer ring of the 
Maelstrom. The thousand pound stake, 
the whole estate put up on a game — what 
are these but the instruments of kindling 
that tremendous excitement which a dis- 
eased heart craves ? What is the amuse- 
ment for which you play but the excitement 
of the game ? And for what but this does 
the jaded gambler play ? You differ from 
him only in the degree of the same feeling. 
Do not solace yourself that you shall 
escape because others have ; for they 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING j6i 

stopped, and you go on. Are you as safe as 
they, when you are in the gulf-stream of 
perdition, and they on the shore ? But 
have you ever asked, how many have 
escaped ? Not one in a thousand is left 
unblighted ! You have nine hundred and 
ninety-nine chances against you, and one 
for you ; and will you go on ? If a dis- 
ease should stalk through the town, devour- 
ing whole families, and sparing not one in 
five hundred, would you lie down under it 
quietly because you have one chance in 
five hundred ? Had a scorpion stung you, 
would it alleviate your pangs to reflect that 
you had only one chance in one hundred ? 
Had you swallowed corrosive poison, 
would it ease your convulsions to think 
there was only one chance in fifty for you ? 
I do not call every man who plays a gam- 
bler, but a gambler in embryo. Let me 
trace your course from the amusement of 
innocent playing to its almost inevitable 
end. 

Scene first. A genteel coffee-house, — 
whose humane screen conceals a line of 
grenadier bottles, and hides respectable 
blushes from impertinent eyes. There is 
a quiet little room opening out of the bar ; 
and here sit four jovial youths. The cards 
are out, the wines are in. The fourth is a 
reluctant hand ; he does not love the drink, 



!6 2 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

nor approve the game. He anticipates 
and fears the result of both. Why is he 
here ? He is a whole-souled fellow, and 
is afraid to seem ashamed of any fashion- 
able gaiety. He will sip his wine upon 
the importunity of a friend newly come to 
town, and is too polite to spoil that friend's 
pleasure by refusing a part in the game. 
They sit, shuffle, deal ; the night wears 
on, the clock telling no tale of passing 
hours — the prudent liquor-fiend has made 
it safely dumb. The night is getting old ; 
its dank air grows fresher ; the east is 
grey ; the gaming and drinking and hila- 
rious laughter are over, and the youths 
wending homeward. What says con- 
science ? No matter what it says ; they 
did not hear, and we will not. Whatever 
was said, it was very shortly answered 
thus: "This has not been gambling; all 
were gentlemen ; there was no cheating ; 
simply a convivial evening ; no stakes 
except the bills incident to the entertain- 
ment. If anybody blames a young man 
for a little innocent exhilaration on a spe- 
cial occasion, he is a superstitious bigot ; 
let him croak!" Such a garnished game 
is made the text to justify the whole 
round of gambling. Let us, then, look at 

Scene the second. In a room so silent that 
there is no sound except the shrill cock 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING 16$ 

crowing the morning, where the forgotten 
candles burn dimly over the long and 
lengthened wick, sit four men. Carved 
marble could not be more motionless, save 
their hands. Pale, watchful, though weary, 
their eyes pierce the cards, or furtively read 
each other's faces. Hours have passed 
over them thus. At length they rise with- 
out words ; some, .with a satisfaction which 
only makes their faces brightly haggard,, 
scrape off the piles of money ; others, dark, 
sullen, silent, fierce, move away from -their 
lost money. The darkest and fiercest of 
the four is that young friend who first sat 
down to make out a game ! He will never 
sit so innocently again. What says he to 
his conscience now ? " I have a right to 
gamble ; I have a right to be damned too,, 
if I choose ; whose business is it ? " 

Scene the third. Years have passed on. 
He has seen youth ruined, at first with ex- 
postulation, then with only silent regret, 
then consenting to take part of the spoils ; 
and finally, he has himself decoyed, duped, 
and stripped them without mercy. Go 
with me into that dilapidated house, not far 
from the landing, at New Orleans. Look 
into that dirty room. Around a broken 
table, sitting upon boxes, kegs, or rickety 
chairs, see a filthy crew dealing cards 
smouched with tobacco, grease and liquor. 



164 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



One has a pirate-face burnished and burnt 
with brandy; a shock of grizzly, matted 
hair, half covering his villain eyes, which 
glare out like a wild beast's from a thicket. 
Close by him wheezes a white-faced, drop- 
sical wretch, vermin-covered, and stenchful. 
A scoundrel-Spaniard, and a burly negro, 
(the jolliest of the four,) complete the group. 
They have spectators — drunken sailors, and 
ogling, thieving, drinking women, who 
should have died long ago, when all that 
was womanly died. Here hour draws on 
hour, sometimes with brutal laughter, some- 
times with threat, and oath, and uproar. 
The last few stolen dollars lost, and temper 
too, each charges each with cheating, and 
high words ensue, and blows ; and the 
whole gang burst out the door, beating, 
biting, scratching, and rolling over and over 
in the dirt and dust. The worst, the fiercest, 
the drunkest, of the four, is our friend who 
began by making up the game ! 

Scene the fourth. Upon this bright day, 
stand with me, if you would be sick of hu- 
manity, and look over that multitude of 
men kindly gathered to see a murderer 
hung ! At last, a guarded cart drags on a 
thrice-guarded wretch. At the gallows' 
ladder his courage fails. His coward-feet 
refuse to ascend ; dragged up, he is sup- 
ported by bustling officials ; his brain reels, 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING 



I6 5 



his eye swims, while the meek minister 
utters a final prayer by his leaden ear. The 
prayer is said, the noose is fixed, the signal 
is given ; a shudder runs through the crowd 
as he swings free. After a moment, his 
convulsed limbs stretch down, and hang 
heavily and still ; and he who began to 
gamble to make up a game, and ended 
with stabbing an enraged victim whom he 
had fleeced, has here played his last game, 
— himself the stake ! 

I feel impelled, in closing, to call the at- 
tention of all sober citizens to some potent 
influences which are exerted in favor of 
gambling. 

In our civil economy we have Legislators 
to devise and enact wholesome laws ; 
Lawyers to counsel and aid those who need 
the laws' relief; and Judges to determine 
and administer the laws. If Legislators, 
Lawyers, and Judges are gamblers, with 
what hope do we warn off the young from 
this deadly fascination, against such author- 
itative examples of high public function- 
aries ? With what eminent fitness does that 
Judge press the bench, who in private com- 
mits the vices which officially he is set to 
condemn ! With what singular terrors does 
he frown on a convicted gambler with 
whom he played last night, and will play 
again to-night ! How wisely should the fine 



I 66 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

be light which the sprightly criminal will 
win and pay out of the Judge's own pocket ! 

With the name of Judge is associated 
ideas of immaculate purity, sober piety, and 
fearless, favorless justice. Let it then be 
counted a dark crime for a recreant official 
so far to forget his reverend place, and 
noble office, as to run the gantlet of filthy 
vices, and make the word Judge, to suggest 
an incontinent trifler, who smites with his 
mouth, and smirks with his eye ; who holds 
the rod to strike the criminal, and smites 
only the law to make a gap for criminals to 
pass through ! If God loves this land, may 
he save it from truckling, drinking, swearing, 
gambling, vicious Judges ! * 

With such Judges I must associate cor- 
rupt Legislators, whose bawling patriotism 
leaks out in all the sinks of infamy at the 
Capital. These living exemplars of vice, 
pass still-born laws against vice. Are such 
men sent to the Capital only to practise de- 
bauchery ? Laborious seedsmen — they 
gather every germ of evil ; and laborious 
sowers — at home they strew them far and 
wide ! It is a burning shame, a high out- 
rage, that public men, by corrupting the 

* The general eminent integrity of the Bench is unquestionable — 
and no remarks in the text are to be construed as an oblique as- 
persion of the profession. But the purer our Judges generally, 
the more shameless is it that some will not abandon either their 
vices or their office. 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING \^j 

young with the example of manifold vices, 
should pay back their constituents for their 
honors ! 

Our land has little to fear from abroad, 
and much from within. We can bear for- 
eign aggression, scarcity, the revulsions of 
commerce, plagues, and pestilences ; but we 
cannot bear vicious Judges, corrupt Courts, 
gambling Legislators, and a vicious, corrupt, 
and gambling constituency. Let us not be 
deceived ! The decay of civil institutions 
begins at the core. The outside wears all 
the lovely hues of ripeness, when the inside 
is rotting. Decline does not begin in bold 
and startling acts ; but, as in autumnal 
leaves, in rich and glowing colors. Over 
diseased vitals, consumptive laws wear the 
hectic blush, a brilliant eye, and transparent 
skin. Could the public sentiment declare 
that personal morality is the first element 
of patriotism ; that corrupt Legislators are 
the most pernicious of criminals ; that the 
Judge who lets the villain off, is the villain's 
patron; that tolerance of crime is intoler- 
ance of virtue, — our nation might defy all 
enemies and live forever ! 

And now, my young friends, I beseech 
you to let alone this evil before it be med- 
dled with. You are safe from vice when 
you avoid even its appearance ; and only 
then. The first steps to wickedness are 



j68 lectures to young men 

imperceptible. We do not wonder at the 
inexperience of Adam ; but it is wonderful 
that six thousand years' repetition of the 
same arts, and the same uniform disaster, 
should have taught men nothing! that 
generation after generation should perish, 
and the wreck be no warning ! 

The mariner searches his chart for hid- 
den rocks, stands off from perilous shoals, 
and steers wide of reefs on which hang 
shattered morsels of wrecked ships, and 
runs in upon dangerous shores with the ship 
manned, the wheel in hand, and the lead 
constantly sounding. But the mariner upon 
life's sea, carries no chart of other men's 
voyages, drives before every wind that will 
speed him, draws upon horrid shores with 
slumbering crew, or heads in upon roaring 
reefs as though he would not perish where 
thousands have perished before him. 

Hell? is populated with the victims of 
" harmless amusements!' Will man never 
learn that the way to hell is through the 
valley of deceit ? The power of Satan to 
hold his victims is nothing to that mastery 
of art by which he first gains them. When 
he approaches to charm us, it is not as a 
grim fiend, gleaming from a lurid cloud, but 
as an angel of light radiant with innocence. 
His words fall like dew upon the flower; 
as musical as the crystal-drop warbling from 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING 



169 



a fountain. Beguiled by his art, he leads 
you to the enchanted ground. Oh ! how it 
glows with every refulgent hue of heaven ! 
Afar off he marks the dismal gulf of vice 
and crime; its smoke of torment slowly 
rising, and rising forever ! and he himself 
cunningly warns you of its dread disaster, 
for the very purpose of blinding and draw- 
ing you thither. He leads you to captivity 
through all the bowers of lulling magic. 
He plants your foot on odorous flowers; 
he fans your cheek with balmy breath ; he 
overhangs your head with rosy clouds ; he 
fills your ear with distant, drowsy music, 
charming every sense to rest. Oh ye ! who 
have thought the way to hell was bleak and 
frozen as Norway, parched and barren as 
Sahara, strewed like Golgotha with bones 
and skulls reeking with stench like the vale 
of Gehenna, — witness your mistake ! The 
way to hell is gorgeous ! It is a highway, 
cast up ; no lion is there, no ominous bird 
to hoot a warning, no echoings of the wail- 
ing-pit, no lurid gleams of distant fires, or 
moaning sounds of hidden woe ! Paradise 
is imitated to build you away to death ; the 
flowers of heaven are stolen and poisoned ; 
the sweet plant of knowledge is here ; the 
pure white flower of religion ; seeming vir- 
tue and the charming tints of innocence are 
scattered all along like native herbage. The 



170 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



enchanted victim travels on. Standing afar 
behind, and from a silver-trumpet, a heav- 
enly messenger sends down the wind a sol- 
emn warning : There is a way which seem- 

ETH RIGHT TO MAN, BUT THE END THEREOF 

is death. And again, with louder blast: 
The wise man foreseeth the evil ; fools 
pass on and are punished. Startled for a 
moment, the victim pauses ; gazes round 
upon the flowery scene, and whispers, Is it 
not harmless ? — "Harmless, " responds a 
serpent from the grass ! — "Harmless" echo 
the sighing winds ! — "Harmless" re-echo a 
hundred airy tongues ! If now a gale from 
heaven might only sweep the clouds away 
through which the victim gazes; oh! if God 
would break that potent power which chains 
the blasts of hell, and let the sulphur-stench 
roll up the vale, how would the vision 
change ! — the road become a track of dead 
men's bones ! — the heavens a lowering 
storm ! — the balmy breezes, distant wailings 
— and all those balsam-shrubs that lied to 
his senses, sweat drops of blood upon their 
poison-boughs ! 

Ye who are meddling with the edges of 
vice, ye are on this road ! — and utterly 
duped by its enchantments ! Your eye has 
already lost its honest glance, your taste 
has lost its purity, your heart throbs with 
poison! The leprosy is all over you, its 



GAMBLERS AND GAMBLING 



171 



blotches and eruptions cover you. Your 
feet stand on slippery places, whence in due 
time they shall slide, if you refuse the 
warning which I raise. They shall 
slide from heaven, never to be visited 
by a gambler ; slide down to that 
fiery abyss below you, out of which none 
ever come. Then, when the last card is 
cast, and the game over, and you lost ; 
then, when the echo of your fall shall ring 
through hell, — in malignant triumph, shall 
the Arch-Gambler, who cunningly played 
for your soul, have his prey ! Too late you 
shall look back upon life as a mighty game, 
in which you were the stake, and Satan the 
winner ! 



THE STRANGE WOMAN 



All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profit- 
able for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for in- 
struction in righteousness : that the man of God may 
be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. 
2 Tim. iii. 16, 17. 

SURELY one cannot declare the whole 
counsel of God, and leave out a sub- 
ject which is interwoven with almost 
every chapter of the Bible. So inveterate 
is the prejudice against introducing into 
the pulpit the subject of Licentiousness, 
that Ministers of the Gospel, knowing the 
vice to be singularly dangerous and fre- 
quent, have yet by silence almost complete, 
or broken only by circuitous allusions, 
manifested their submission to the popular 
taste.* That Vice upon which it has 
pleased God to be more explicit and full 

* The liberality with which this Lecture was condemned before I 
had written it, and the prompt criticisms afterwards, of those who 
did not hear it, have induced me to print it almost unaltered. 
Otherwise I should have changed many portions of it from forms 
of expression peculiar to the pulpit into those better suited to a 
book. 

U73) 



174 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



than upon any other; against which he 
uttered his voice upon Sinai, Thou shalt not 
commit adultery ; upon which the lawgiver, 
Moses, legislated with boldness ; which 
Judges condemned ; upon which the vener- 
able Prophets spake oft and again ; against 
which Christ with singular directness and 
plainness uttered the purity of religion ; 
and upon which He inspired Paul to dis- 
course to the Corinthians, and to almost 
every primitive church; this subject, upon 
which the Bible does not so much speak, 
as thunder — not by a single bolt, but peal 
after peal — we are solemnly warned not to 
introduce into the pulpit ! 

I am entirely aware of the delicacy of in- 
troducing this subject into the pulpit. 

One difficulty arises from the sensitive- 
ness of unaffected purity. A mind, retain- 
ing all the dew and freshness of innocence, 
shrinks from the very idea of impurity, as 
if it were sin to have thought or heard ofit, 
— as if even the shadow of the evil would 
leave some soil upon the unsullied white- 
ness of the virgin-mind. Shall we be angry 
with this? or shall we rudely rebuke so 
amiable a feeling, because it regrets a 
necessary duty ? God forbid ! If there be, 
in the world, one whose generous faults 
should be rebuked only by the tenderness 
of a reproving smile, it is the mistake of 



THE STRANGE WOMAN 



175 



inexperienced purity. We would as soon 
pelt an angel, bewildered among men and 
half smothered with earth's noxious vapors r 
for his trembling apprehensions. To any 
such, who have half wished that I might not 
speak, I say : — Nor would I, did I not know 
that purity will suffer more by the silence 
of shame, than by the honest voice of truth. 
Another difficulty springs from the nature 
of the English language, which has hardly 
been framed in a school where it may wind 
and fit itself to all the phases of impurity. 
But were I speaking French — the dialect of 
refined sensualism and of licentious litera- 
ture ; the language of a land where taste 
and learning and art wait upon the altars of 
impurity — then I might copiously speak of 
this evil, nor use one plain word. But I 
thank God, the honest English tongue 
which I have learned, has never been so 
bred to this vile subservience of evil. We 
have plain words enough to say plain 
things, but the dignity and manliness of our 
language has never grown supple to twine 
around brilliant dissipation. It has too 
many plain words, vulgar words, vile words ; 
but it has few mirror-words, which cast a 
sidelong image of an idea; it has few words 
which wear a meaning smile, a courtesan- 
glance significant of something unexpressed. 
When public vice necessitates public rep- 



176 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



rehension, it is, for these reasons, difficult 
to redeem plainness from vulgarity. We 
must speak plainly and properly ; or else 
speak by innuendo — which is the devil's 
language. 

Another difficulty lies in the confused 
echoes which vile men create in every com- 
munity, when the pulpit disturbs them. Do 
I not know the arts of cunning men ? Did 
not Demetrius, the Silversmith (worthy to 
have lived in our day ! ) become most won- 
derfully pious, and run all over the city to 
rouse up the dormant zeal of Diana's wor- 
shippers, and gather a mob, to whom he 
preached that Diana must be cared for ; 
when, to his fellow-craftsmen, he told the 
truth : our craft is in danger ! Men will 
not quietly be exposed. They foresee the 
rising of a virtuously retributive public sen- 
timent, as the mariner sees the cloud of the 
storm rolling up the heavens ! They strive 
to forestall and resist it. How loudly will 
a liquor-fiend protest against temperance 
lectures — sinful enough for redeeming vic- 
tims from his" paw! How sensitive some 
men to a church bell ! they are high priests 
of revivals at a horse-race, a theatre, or a 
liquor-supper; but a religious revival pains 
their sober minds, Even thus, the town 
will be made vocal with outcries against 
sermons on licentiousness. Who cries 



THE STRANGE WOMAN 



177 



out ? — the sober ? — the immaculate ? — the 
devout ? It is the voice of the son of mid- 
night ; it is the shriek of the strange 
woman's victim ! and their sensitiveness is 
not of purity, but of fear! Men protest 
against the indecency of the pulpit, because 
the pulpit makes them feel their own inde- 
cency ; they would drive us from the inves- 
tigation of vice, that they may keep the 
field open for their own occupancy. I 
expect such men's reproaches. I know the 
reasons of them. I am not to be turned by 
them, not one hair's breadth, if they rise to 
double their present volume, until I have 
liunted home the wolf to his lair, and 
ripped off his brindled hide in his very den ! 
Another difficulty exists, in the criminal 
fastidiousness of the community upon this 
subject. This is the counterfeit of delicacy. 
It resembles it less than paste-jewels do the 
pure pearl. Where delicacy, the atmos- 
phere of a pure heart, is lost, or never was 
had, a substitute is sought; and is found in 
forms of delicacy, not in its feelings. It is 
a delicacy of exterior, of etiquette, of show, 
of rules ; not of thought, not of pure imag- 
ination, not of the crystal-current of the 
heart ! Criminal fastidiousness is the 
Pharisee's sepulchre ; clean, white, beauti- 
ful without, full of dead men's bones within ! 
— the Pharisee's platter, the Pharisee's cup 



i 7 8 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



— it is the very Pharisee himself; and like 
him of old, lays on burdens grievous to be 
borne. Delicacy is a spring which God has 
sunken in the rock, which the winter never 
freezes, the summer never heats ; which 
sends its quiet waters with music down the 
flowery hill-side, and which is pure and 
transparent, because it has at the bottom no 
sediment. I would that every one of us 
had this well of life, gushing from our 
hearts — an everlasting and full stream ! 

False modesty always judges by the out- 
side ; it cares how you speak, more than 
what. That which would outrage in plain 
words, may be implied furtively, in the sal- 
lies of wit or fancy, and be admissible. 
Every day I see this giggling modesty, 
which blushes at language more than at its 
meaning ; which smiles upon base things, 
if they will appear in the garb of virtue ! 
That disease of mind to which I have fre- 
quently alluded in these lectures, which 
leads it to clothe vice beautifully and then 
admit it, has had a fatal effect also upon 
Literature ; giving currency to filth, by coin- 
ing it in the mint of beauty. It is under 
the influence of this disease of taste and 
heart, that we hear expressed such strange 
judgments upon English authors. Those 
who speak plainly what they mean, when 
they speak at all, are called rude and vul- 



THE STRANGE WOMAN 



179 



gar ; while those upon whose exquisite sen- 
tences the dew of indelicacy rests like so 
many brilliant pearls of the morning upon 
flowers, are called our moral authors ! 

The most dangerous writers in the 
English language are those whose artful 
insinuations and mischievous polish reflect 
upon the mind the image of impurity, with- 
out presenting the impurity itself. A plain 
vulgarity in a writer is its own antidote. It 
is like a foe who attacks us openly, and 
gives us opportunity of defence. But impu- 
rity, secreted under beauty, is like a treach- 
erous friend who strolls with us in a garden 
of sweets, and destroys us by the odor of 
poisonous flowers proffered to our senses. 
Let the reprehensible grossness of Chaucer 
be compared with the perfumed, elaborate 
brilliancy of Moore's license. I would not 
willingly answer at the bar of God for the 
writings of either ; but of the two, I would 
rather bear the sin of Chaucer's plain- 
spoken words, which never suggest more 
than they say, than the sin of Moore's lan- 
guage, over which plays a witching hue 
and shade of licentiousness. I would rather 
put the downright, and often abomina- 
ble vulgarity of Swift into my child's hand, 
than the scoundrel-indirections of Sterne. 
They are both impure writers; but not 
equally harmful. The one says what he 



lg LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

means ; the other means what he dare not 
say. Swift is, in this respect, Belial in his 
own form ; Sterne is Satan in the form of 
an angel of light : and many will receive 
the temptation of the Angel, who would 
scorn the proffer of the Demon. What an 
incredible state of morals, in the English 
church, that permitted two of her eminent 
clergy to be the most licentious writers of 
the age, and as impure as almost any of the 
English literature ! Even our most classic 
authors have chosen to elaborate, with 
exquisite art, scenes which cannot but have 
more effect upon the passions than upon 
the taste. Embosomed in the midst of 
Thomson's glowing Seasons, one finds 
descriptions unsurpassed by any part of 
Don Juan ; and as much more dangerous 
than it is, as a courtesan, countenanced by 
virtuous society, is more dangerous than 
when among her own associates. Indeed, 
an author who surprises you with refined 
indelicacies in moral and reputable writ- 
ings, is worse than one, who, without dis- 
guise, and on purpose, serves up a whole 
banquet of indelicacies. Many will admit 
poison-morsels well sugared, who would 
revolt from an infernal feast of impurity. 
There is little danger that robbers will 
tempt the honest young to robbery. Some 
one first tempts him to falsehood ; next, to 



THE STRANGE WOMAN jgi 

petty dishonesties ; next, to pilfering ; then, 
to thieving ; and now, only, will the robber 
influence him, when others have handed 
him down to his region of crime. Those 
authors who soften evil, and show deform- 
ity with tints of beauty ; who arm their 
general purity w r ith the occasional sting of 
impurity ; — these are they who take the 
feet out of the straight path — the guiltiest 
path of seduction. He who feeds an 
inflamed appetite with food spiced to fire, 
is less guilty than he who hid in the mind 
the leaven which wrought this appetite. 
The polished seducer is certainly more 
dangerous than the vulgar debauchee — 
both in life and in literature. 

In this contrast are to be placed Shake- 
speare and Bulwer : Shakespeare is some- 
times gross, but not often covertly impure. 
Bulwer is slily impure, but not often gross. 
I am speaking, however, only of Shake- 
speare's Plays, and. not of his youthful 
fugitive pieces ; which, I am afraid, cannot 
have part in this exception. He began 
wrong, but grew better. At first, he wrote 
by the taste of his age ; but when a man, 
he wrote to his own taste : and though he 
is not without sin, yet, compared with his 
contemporaries, he is not more illustrious 
for his genius than for his purity. Repre- 
hension, to be effective, should be just. 



jg2 lectures to young men 

No man is prepared to excuse properly the 
occasional blemishes of this wonderful 

writer, who has not been shocked at the 
immeasurable licentiousness o\ the Drama- 
tists of his cycle. One play o( Ford, one 
act, one conversation, has more abomina- 
tions than the whole world of Shakespeare. 
Let those women, who ignorant ly sneer at 
Shakespeare, remember that they ate in- 
debted to him tor the noblest conceptions 
of woman's character in our literature — 
the more praiseworthy, because he found 
no models in current authors. The occa- 
sional touches of truth and womanly deli- 
cacy in the early Dramatists are no com- 
pensation for the wholesale coarseness and 
vulgarity of their female characters. In 
Shakespeare, woman appears in her true 
form — pure, disinterested, ardent, devoted ; 
capable of the noblest feelings and of the 
highest deeds. The language of many o\~ 
Shakespeare's women would be shocking 
in our day; but so would be the domestic 
manners of that age. The same actions 
may in one age be a sign of corruption, 
and be perfectly innocent in another. No 
one is shocked that in a pioneer-cabin, one 
room serves for a parlor, a kitchen, and a 
bed-room, for the whole family, and for 
promiscuous guests. Should fastidiousness 
revolt at this, as vulgar, — the vulgarity 



THE STRANGE WOMAN 



I8 3 



must be accredited to the fastidiousness, 
and not to the custom. Yet, it would be 
inexcusable in a refined metropolis, and 
everywhere the moment it ceases to be 
necessary. But nothing in these remarks 
must apologize for language or deed, which 
indicates an impure heart. No age, no 
custom, may plead extenuation for essen- 
tial lust; and no sound mind can refrain 
from commendation of the master-drama- 
tist of the world, when he learns that in 
writing for a most licentious age, he rose 
above it so far as to become something 
like a model to it of a more virtuous way. 
Shakespeare left the dramatical literature 
immeasurably purer than it came to him. 

Bulwer has made the English novel- 
literature more vile than he found it. The 
one was a reformer, the other an implacable 
corrupter. We respect and admire the one, 
(while we mark his faults,) because he with- 
stood his age; and we despise with utter 
loathing the other, whose specific gravity of 
wickedness sunk him below the level of his 
own age. With a moderate caution, Shake- 
speare may be safely put into the hands of 
the young. I regard the admission of Bul- 
wer as a crime against the first principles of 
virtue. 

In all the cases which I have considered, 
you will remark a greater indulgence to that 



x84 lectures to young men 

impurity which breaks out on the surface,, 
than to that which lurks in the blood and 
destroys the constitution. It is the curse of 
our literature that it is traversed by so many 
rills of impurity. It is a vast champaign, 
waving with unexampled luxuriance of 
flower, and vine, and fruit ; but the poisonous 
flower everywhere mingles with the pure ; 
and the deadly cluster lays its cheek on the 
wholesome grape ; nay, in the same cluster 
grow both the harmless and the hurtful 
berry ; so that the hand can hardly be 
stretched out to gather flower or fruit with- 
out coming back poisoned. It is both a 
shame and an amazing wonder, that the 
literature of a Christian nation should reek: 
with a filth which Pagan antiquity could 
scarcely endure ; that the Ministers of Christ 
should have left floating in the pool of offen- 
sive writings, much that would have brought 
blood to the cheek of a Roman priest, and 
have shamed an actor of the school of Aris- 
tophanes. Literature is, in turn, both the 
cause and effect of the spirit of the age. Its 
effect upon this age has been to create a 
lively relish for exquisitely artful licentious- 
ness, and disgust only for vulgarity. A 
witty, brilliant, suggestive indecency is 
tolerated for the sake of its genius. An age 
which translates and floods the community 
with French novels (inspired by Venus and 



THE STRANGE WOMAN 



I8 5 



Bacchus,) which reprints in popular forms, 
Byron, and Bulwer, and Moore, and Field- 
ing, proposes to revise Shakespeare and 
expurgate the Bible ! ! Men who, at home, 
allow Don Juan to lie within reach of 
every reader, will not allow a Minister of 
the gospel to expose the evil of such a 
literature ! To read authors whose lines 
drop with the very gall of death ; to vault 
in elegant dress as near the edge of inde- 
cency as is possible without treading over ; 
to express the utmost possible impurity so 
dexterously, that not a vulgar word is used, 
but rosy, glowing, suggestive language — 
this, with many, is refinement. But to 
expose the prevalent vice ; to meet its glit- 
tering literature with the plain and manly 
language of truth ; to say nothing except 
what one desires to say plainly — this, it 
seems, is vulgarity ! 

One of the first steps in any reformation 
must be, not alone nor first the correction 
of the grossness, but of the elegancies of 
impurity. Could our literature, and men's 
conversation, be put under such authority 
that neither should express, by insinuation, 
what dared not be said openly, in a little 
time, men would not dare to say at all what 
it would be indecent to speak plainly. 

If there be here any disciples of Bulwer 
ready to disport in the very ocean of li- 



T 86 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

cense, if its waters only seem translucent ; 
who can read and relish all that fires the 
heart, and are only then distressed and 
shocked when a serious man raises the rod 
to correct and repress the evil ; if there be 
here any who can drain his goblet of 
mingled wine, and only shudder at crys- 
tal-water; any who can see this modern 
prophet of villany strike the rock of corrup- 
tion, to water his motley herd of revellers, 
but hate him who out of the Rock of Truth 
should bid gush the healthful stream ; — I 
beseech them to bow their heads in this 
Christian assembly, and weep their tears of 
regret in secret places, until the evening 
service be done, and Bulwer can staunch 
their tears', and comfort again their wounded 
hearts. 

Whenever an injunction is laid upon 
plain and undeniable scripture-truth, and I 
am forbidden, upon pain of your displeasure, 
to preach it; then, I should not so much 
regard my personal feelings, as the affront 
which you put upon my master ; and in my 
inmost soul I shall resent that affront. 
There is no esteem, there is no love, like 
that which is founded in the sanctity of re- 
ligion. Between many of you and me, that 
sanctity exists. I stood by your side when 
you awoke in the dark valley of conviction, 
and owned yourselves lost. I have led you 



THE STRANGE WOMAN 



I8 7 



by the hand out of the darkness ; by your 
side I have prayed, and my tears have 
mingled with yours. I have bathed you in 
the crystal-waters of a holy baptism ; and 
when you sang the song of the ransomed 
captive, it filled my heart with a joy as 
great as that which uttered it. Love, be- 
ginning in such scenes, and drawn from so 
sacred a fountain, is not commercial, not 
fluctuating. Amid severe toils and not a 
few anxieties, it is the crown of rejoicing to 
a Pastor. What have we in this world but 
you? To be your servant in the gospel, 
we renounce all those paths by which other 
men seek preferment. Silver and gold is 
not in our houses, and our names are not 
heard where fame proclaims others. Rest 
we are forbidden until death ; and girded 
with the whole armor, our lives are spent 
in the dust and smoke of continued battle. 
But even such love will not tolerate bond- 
age. We can be servants to love, but 
never slaves to caprice ; still less can we 
heed the mandates of iniquity ! 



The proverbs of Solomon are designed 
to furnish us a series of maxims for every 
relation of life. There will naturally be the 
most said where there is the most needed. 



!88 lectures to young men 

If the frequency of warning against any sin 
measures the liability of man to that sin, 
then none is worse than Impurity. In 
many separate passages is the solemn warn- 
ing against the strange woman given with 
a force which must terrify all but the inno- 
cent or incorrigible ; and with a delicacy 
which all will feel but those whose modesty 
is the fluttering of an impure imagination. 
I shall take such parts of all these passages 
as will make out a connected narrative. 

When wisdom entereth into thy heart, and 
knowledge is pleasant unto thy sold, discre- 
tion shall preserve thee . . . to deliver 
thee from the strange woman, which flatter- 
eth with ' her tongue ; her lips drop as a 
honey-comb, her mouth is smoother than oil. 
She sitteth at the door of her house on a seat 
in the high places of the city, to call to pas- 
sengers who go right on their ways : " Who- 
so is simple let him turn in hither" To him 
that wanteth understanding, she saith, 
"Stolen waters are sweet and bread eaten in 
secret is pleasant ; " but he know eth not that 
the dead are there. Lust not after her 
beauty, neither let her take thee with her eye- 
lids. She forsaketh the guide of her youth, 
and forgetteth the covenant of her God. Lest 
thou shouldst ponder the path of life, her 
ways are movable, that thoit canst not know 



THE STRANGE WOMAN 



189 



them. Remove thy way far from her, and 
come not nigh the door of her house \ for her 
house inclineth unto death. She has cast 
down many wounded ; yea, ma?iy strong men 
have been slain by her. Her house is the 
way to hell, going down to the chamber of 
death ; none that go unto her, return again ; 
neither take they hold of the paths of life. 
Let not thy heart decline to her ways, lest 
thou mourn at last, when thy flesh and thy 
body are consumed, and say : "How have I 
hated instruction, and my heart despised re- 
proof. I was in all evil in the midst of the 
congregation aiid assembly!' 

I. Can language be found which can draw 
a corrupt beauty so vividly as this; Which 
forsakeih the giude of her youth, and for- 
getteth the covenant of her God. Look out 
upon that fallen creature whose gay sally 
through the street calls out the significant 
laugh of bad men, the pity of good men, 
and the horror of the pure. Was not her 
cradle as pure as ever a loved infant pressed ? 
Love soothed its cries. Sisters watched its 
peaceful sleep, and a mother pressed it 
fondly to her bosom ! Had you afterwards, 
when spring-flowers covered the earth, and 
every gale was odor, and every sound was 
music, seen her, fairer than the lily or the 
violet, searching them, would you not have 
said, " Sooner shall the rose grow poisonous 



190 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



than she ; both may wither, but neither cor- 
rupt." And how often, at evening, did she 
clasp her tiny hands in prayer ? How often 
did she put the wonder-raising questions to 
her mother, of God, and heaven, and the 
dead — as if she had seen heavenly things 
in a vision ! As young womanhood ad- 
vanced, and these foreshadowed graces 
ripened to the bud and burst into bloom, 
health glowed in her cheek, love looked 
from her eye, and purity was an atmosphere 
around her. Alas ! she forsook the guide 
of her youth. Faint thoughts of evil, like 
a far-off cloud which the sunset gilds, came 
first; nor does the rosy sunset blush deeper 
along the heaven, than her cheek, at the 
first thought of evil. Now, ah ! mother, 
and thou guiding elder sister, could you 
have seen the lurking spirit embosomed in 
that cloud, a holy prayer might have broken 
the spell, a tear have washed its stain ! 
Alas ! they saw it not ; she spoke it not ; 
she was forsaking the guide of her youth. 
She thinketh no more of heaven. She 
breatheth no more prayers. She hath no 
more penitential tears to shed ; until, after 
a long life, she drops the bitter tear upon 
the cheek of despair, — then her only suitor. 
Thou hast forsaken the covenant of thy God. 
Go down ! fall never to rise ! Hell opens to 
be thy home ! 



THE STRANGE WOMAN 



I 9 I 



Oh Prince of torment ! if thou hast trans- 
forming power, give some relief to this once 
innocent child, whom another has cor- 
rupted ! Let thy deepest damnation seize 
him who brought her hither ! let his coro- 
nation be upon the very mount of torment! 
and the rain of fiery hail be his salutation I 
He shall be crowned with thorns poisoned 
and anguish-bearing ; and every woe beat 
upon him, and every wave of hell roll over 
the first risings of baffled hope. Thy guilty 
thoughts, and guilty deeds, shall flit after 
thee with bows which never break, and 
quivers forever emptying but never ex- 
hausted! If Satan .hath one dart more 
poisoned than another ; if God hath one 
bolt more transfixing and blasting than an- 
other ; if there be one hideous spirit more 
unrelenting than others ; they shall be thine \ 
most execrable wretch ! who led her to for- 
sake the guide of her youth, and to abandon 
the covenant of her God. 

II. The next injunction of God to the 
young is upon the ensnaring danger of 
Beauty. Desire not her beauty in thy heart, 
neither let her take thee with her eyelids. 
God did not make so much of nature with 
exquisite beauty, or put within us a taste for 
it, without object. He meant that it should 
delight us. He made every flower to charm 
us. He never made a color, nor graceful- 



192 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEAT 



flying bird, nor silvery insect, without mean- 
ing to please our taste. When He clothes 
a man or woman with beauty, He confers a 
favor, did we know how to receive it. 
Beauty, with amiable dispositions and ripe 
intelligence, is more to any woman than a 
queen's crown. The peasant's daughter, the 
rustic belle, if they have woman's sound 
discretion, may be rightfully prouder than 
kings' daughters ; for God adorns those who 
are both good and beautiful ; man can only 
conceal the want of beauty, by blazing 
jewels. 

As moths and tiny insects flutter around 
the bright blaze which was kindled for no 
harm, so the foolish young, fall down burned 
and destroyed by the blaze of beauty. As 
the flame which burns to destroy the insect, 
is consuming itself and soon sinks into the 
socket, so beauty, too often, draws on itself 
that ruin which it inflicts upon others. 

If God hath given thee beauty, tremble; 
for it is as gold in thy house — thieves and 
robbers will prowl around and seek to pos- 
sess it. If God hath put beauty before thine 
eyes, remember how many strong men have 
been cast down wounded by it. Art thou 
stronger than David ? Art thou stronger 
than mighty patriarchs? — than kings and 
princes, who, by its fascinations, have lost 
peace and purity, and honor, and riches, and 



THE STRANGE WOMAN ^^ 

armies, and even kingdoms ? Let other 
men's destruction be thy wisdom ; for it is 
hard to reap prudence upon the field of 
experience. 

III. In the minute description of this 
dangerous creature, mark next how seriously 
we are cautioned of her Wiles. 

Her wiles of dress. Coverings of tapestry 
and the fine linen of Egypt are hers ; the 
perfumes of myrrh and aloes and cinnamon. 
Silks and ribbons, laces and rings, gold and 
equipage ; ah ! how mean a price for dam- 
nation, The wretch who would be hung 
simply for the sake of riding to the gallows 
on a golden chariot, clothed in king's rai- 
ment — -what a fool were he ! Yet how many 
consent to enter the chariot of Death, — 
drawn by the fiery steeds of lust which 
fiercely fly, and stop not for food or breath 
till they have accomplished their fatal 
journey — if they may spread their seat 
with flowery silks, or flaunt their forms with 
glowing apparel and precious jewels! 

Her iviles of speech. Beasts may not 
speak; this honor is too high for them. 
To God's imaged son this prerogative be- 
longs, to utter thought and feeling in artic- 
ulate sounds. We may breathe our 
thoughts to a thousand ears, and infect a 
multitude with the best portions of our 
soul. How, then, has this soul's breath, 
13 



I9 4 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

this echo of our thoughts, this only image 
of our feelings, been perverted, that from 
the lips of sin it hath more persuasion, than 
from the lips of wisdom ! What horrid 
wizard hath put the world under a spell 
and charm, that words from the lips of a 
strange woman shall ring upon ,the ear 
like tones of music; while words from the 
divine lips of religion fall upon the startled 
ear like the funeral tones of the burial-bell ! 
Philosophy seems crabbed ; sin, fair. Purity 
sounds morose and cross; but from the 
lips of the harlot, words drop as honey, and 
flow smoother than oil ; her speech is fair, 
her laugh is merry as music. The eternal 
glory of purity has no lustre, but the deep 
damnation of lust is made as bright as the 
gate of heaven ! 

Her wiles of love. Love is the mind's 
light and heat; it is that tenuous air in 
which all the other faculties exist, as we 
exist in the atmosphere. A mind of the 
greatest stature without love, is like the 
huge pyramid of Egypt — chill and cheer- 
less in all its dark halls and passages. A 
mind with love, is as a king's palace lighted 
for a royal festival. 

Shame ! that the sweetest of all the 
mind's attributes should be suborned to sin ! 
that this daughter of God should become a 
Ganymede to arrogant lusts ! — the cup- 



THE STRANGE WOMAN 



195 



bearer to tyrants ! — yet so it is. Devil- 
tempter ! will thy poison never cease ? — 
shall beauty be poisoned ? — shall language 
be charmed ? — shall love be made to defile 
like pitch, and burn as the living coals ? 
Her tongue is like a bended bow, which 
sends the silvery shaft of flattering words. 
Her eyes shall cheat thee, her dress shall 
beguile thee, her beauty is a trap, her sighs 
are baits, her words are lures, her love is 
poisonous, her flattery is the spider's web 
spread for thee. Oh ! trust not thy heart 
nor ear with Delilah ! The locks of the 
mightiest Samson are soon shorn off, if he 
will but lay his slumbering head upon her 
lap. He who could slay heaps upon heaps 
of Philistines, and bear upon his huge 
shoulders the ponderous iron-gate, and pull 
down the vast temple, was yet too weak to 
contend with one wicked artful woman ! 
Trust the sea with thy tiny boat, trust the 
fickle wind, trust the changing skies of 
April, trust the miser's generosity, the ty- 
rant's mercy ; but ah ! simple man, trust 
not thyself near the artful woman, armed 
in her beauty, her cunning raiment, her 
dimpled smiles, her sighs of sorrow, her 
look of love, her voice of flattery ; — for if 
thou hadst the strength ot ten Ulysses, un- 
less God help thee, Calypso shall make thee 
fast, and hold thee in her island! 



196 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEAT 



Next beware the wile of her reasonings. 
To him that wanteth understanding she 
saith, stolen waters are sweet, and bread 
eaten in secret is pleasant, I came forth to 
meet thee, and I have found thee. 

What says she in the credulous ear of 
inexperience ? Why, she tells him that sin 
is safe ; she swears to him that sin is pure ; 
she protests to him that sin is innocent. 
Out of history she will entice him, and say: 
Who hath ever refused my meat-offerings 
and drink-offerings ? What king have I not 
sought? What conqueror have I not con- 
quered ? Philosophers have not, in all their 
wisdom, learned to hate me. I have been 
the guest of the world's greatest men. The 
Egyptian priest, the Athenian sage, the 
Roman censor, the rude Gaul, have all 
worshipped in my temple. Art thou afraid 
to tread where Plato trod, and the pious 
Socrates ? Art thou wiser than all that ever 
lived ? 

Nay, she readeth the Bible to him ; she 
goeth back along the line of history, and 
readeth of Abraham, and of his glorious 
compeers ; she skippeth past Joseph with 
averted looks, and readeth of David and of 
Solomon ; and whatever chapter tells how 
good men stumbled, there she has turned 
down a leaf, and will persuade thee, with 
honeyed speech, that the best deeds of 



THE STRANGE WOMAN igy 

good men were their sins, and that thou 
shouldst only imitate them in their stum- 
bling and falls ! 

Or, if the Bible will not cheat thee, how 
will she plead thine own nature ; how will 
she whisper, God hath made thee so. How, 
like her father, will she lure thee to pluck 
the apple, saying, Thou shalt not surely die. 
And she will hiss at virtuous men, and spit 
on modest women, and shake her serpent- 
tongue at any purity which shall keep thee 
from her ways. Oh ! then, listen to what 
God says : With much fair speech she 
causeth him to yield ; with the flattery of her 
lips she forced him. He goeth after her as 
an ox goeth to slaughter, or as a fool to the 
correction of the stocks, till a dart strike 
through his liver, — as a bird hasteth to a 
snare and knoweth not that it is for his 
life. 

I will point only to another wile. When 
inexperience has been beguiled by her in- 
fernal machinations, how, like a flock of 
startled birds, will spring up late regrets, 
and shame, and fear ; and worst of all, how 
will conscience ply her scorpion-whip and 
lash thee, uttering with stern visage, "thou 
art dishonored, thou art a wretch, thou art 
lost ! " When the soul is full of such out- 
cry, memory cannot sleep ; she wakes, and 
while conscience still plies the scourge, will 



!q8 LECTURES TO YOUNG ME 1ST 

bring back to thy thoughts, youthful purity, 
home, a mother's face, a sister's love, a 
father's counsel. Perhaps it is out of the 
high heaven that thy mother looks down 
to see thy baseness. Oh ! if she has a 
mother's heart, — nay, but she cannot weep 
for thee there ! 

These wholesome pains, not to be felt if 
there were not yet health in the mind, 
would save the victim, could they have 
time to work. But how often have I seen 
the spider watch, from his dark round hole, 
the struggling fly, until he began to break his 
web ; and then dart out to cast his long 
lithe arms about him, and fasten new cords 
stronger than ever. So, God saith, the 
strange woman shall secure her ensnared 
victims, if they struggle : Lest thou shouldst 
ponder the path of life, her ivays are movable 
that thou canst not know them. 

She is afraid to see thee soberly thinking 
of leaving her, and entering the path of life ; 
therefore her ways are movable. She mul- 
tiplies devices, she studies a thousand new 
wiles, she has some sweet word for every 
sense — obsequience for thy pride, praise 
for thy vanity, generosity for thy selfish- 
ness, religion for thy conscience, racy quips 
for thy wearisomeness, spicy scandal for 
thy curiosity. She is never still, nor the 
same ; but evolving as many shapes as the 



THE STRANGE WOMAN 



I99 



rolling cloud and as many colors as dress 
the wide prairie. 

IV. Having disclosed her wiles, let me 
show you what God says of the chances of 
escape to those who once follow her : None 
that go unto her return again, neither take 
they hold of the paths of life. The strength 
of this language was not meant absolutely 
to exclude hope from those who, having 
wasted their substance in riotous living, 
would yet return ; but to warn the unfallen, 
into what an almost hopeless gulf they 
plunge, if they venture. Some may escape 
— as here and there a mangled sailor crawls 
out of the water upon the beach, — the only 
one or two of the whole crew ; the rest are 
gurgling in the wave with impotent strug- 
gles, or already sunk to the bottom. There 
are many evils which hold their victims by 
the force of habit ; there are others which 
fasten them by breaking their return to so- 
ciety. Many a person never reforms, be- 
cause reform would bring no relief. There 
are other evils which hold men to them, 
because they are like the beginning of a 
fire ; they tend to burn with fiercer and 
wider flames, until all fuel is consumed, and 
go out only when there is nothing to burn. 
Of this last kind is the sin of licentiousness ; 
and when the conflagration once breaks 
out, experience has shown, what the Bible 



200 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

long ago declared, that the chances of ref- 
ormation are few indeed. The certainty 
of continuance is so great, that the chances 
of escape are dropped from the calculation ; 
and it is said roundly, none that go unto 

HER RETURN AGAIN. 

V. We are repeatedly warned against 
the strange woman's house. 

There is no vice like licentiousness, to 
delude with the most fascinating proffers of 
delight, and fulfil the promise with the 
most loathsome experience. All vices at 
the beginning are silver-tongued, but none 
so impassioned as this. All vices in the 
end cheat their dupes, but none with such 
overwhelming disaster as licentiousness. 
I shall describe by an allegory, its specious 
seductions, its plausible promises, its 
apparent innocence, its delusive safety, its 
deceptive joys, — their change, their sting, 
their flight, their misery, and the victim's 
ruin. 

Her house has been cunningly planned 
by an evil architect to attract and please 
the attention. It stands in a vast garden 
full of enchanting objects. It shines in 
glowing colors, and seems full of peace 
and full of pleasure. All the signs are of 
unbounded enjoyment — safe, if not innocent. 
Though every beam is rotten, and the house 
is the house of death, and in it are all the 



THE STRANGE WOMAN 2 OI 

vicissitudes of infernal misery; yet to the 
young it appears a palace of delight. They 
will not believe that death can lurk behind 
so brilliant a fabric. Those who are with- 
in, look out and pine to return ; and those 
who are without, look in and pine to enter. 
Such is the mastery of deluding sin. 

That part of the garden which borders 
on the highway of innocence is carefully 
planted. There is not a poison-weed, nor 
thorn, nor thistle there. Ten thousand 
flowers bloom, and waft a thousand odors. 
A victim cautiously inspects it; but it has 
been too carefully patterned upon innocency 
to be easily detected. This outer garden is 
innocent ; — innocence is the lure to wile you 
from the path into her grounds ; — innocence 
is the bait of that trap by which she has 
secured all her victims. At the gate stands 
a comely porter, saying blandly : Whoso is 
simple let him turn in hither. Will the youth 
enter ? Will he seek her house ? To him- 
self he says, " I will enter only to see the 
garden, — its fruits, its flowers, its birds, its 
arbors, its warbling fountains ! " He is re- 
solved in virtue. He seeks wisdom, not 
pleasure! — Dupe! you are deceived al- 
ready ; and this is your first lesson of wis- 
dom. He passes, and the porter leers behind 
him ! He is within an Enchanter's garden ! 
Can he not now return, if he wishes ? — he 



2Q2 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

will not wish to return, until it is too late. 
He ranges the outer garden near to the high- 
way, thinking as he walks : " How foolishly 
have I been alarmed at pious lies about this 
beautiful place ! I heard it was Hell : I find 
it is Paradise ! " 

Emboldened by the innocency of his first 
steps, he explores the garden further from 
the road. The flowers grow richer; their 
odors exhilarate; the very fruit breathes 
t>erfume like flowers ; and birds seem intox- 
icated with delight anions the fragrant 
shrubs and loaded trees. Soft and silvery 
music steals along the air. 4< Are angels 
singing ? — Oh ! fool that I was, to fear this 
place ; it is all the heaven I need ! Ridic- 
ulous priest, to tell me that death was here, 
where all is beauty, fragrance, and melody! 
Surely, death never lurked in so gorgeous 
apparel as this ! Death is grim, and hide- 
ous ! " He has come near to the strange 
woman's house. If it was beautiful from 
afar, it is celestial now ; for his eyes are be- 
witched with magic. When our passions 
enchant us, how beautiful is the way to 
death ! In every window are sights of pleas- 
ure; from every opening, issue sounds of 
joy — the lute, the harp, bounding feet, and 
echoing laughter. Nymphs have descried 
this Pilgrim of temptation; — they smile and 
beckon. Where are his resolutions now ? 



THE STRANGE WOMAN 



203 



This is the virtuous youth who came to 
observe! He has already seen too much! 
but he will see more; he will taste, feel, re- 
gret, weep, wail, die ! The most beautiful 
nymph that eye ever rested on, approaches 
with decent guise and modest gestures, to 
give him hospitable welcome. For a mo- 
ment he recalls his home, his mother, his 
sister-circle; but they seem far-away, dim, 
powerless ! Into his ear the beautiful her- 
ald pours the sweetest sounds of love : " You 
are welcome here, and worthy ! You have 
early wisdom, to break the bounds of super- 
stition, and to seek these grounds where 
summer never ceases, and sorrow never 
comes! Hail! and welcome to the House 
of pleasure!" There seemed to be a re- 
sponse to these words ; the house, the trees, 
and the very air, seemed to echo, " Hail ! 
and welcome ! " In the stillness which fol- 
lowed, had the victim been less intoxicated, 
he might have heard a clear and solemn 
voice which seemed to fall straight down 
from heaven : Come not nigh the door of 
her house. Her house is the way to 
hell, going down to the chambers of 

DEATH ! 

It is too late ! He has gone in, — who 
shall never return. He goeth after Iter 
straightway as an ox gcetli to the slaiigli- 
ter ; or as a fool to the correction of the 



204 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



stocks . . . and ' knowethnot that it is for 
Ids life. 

Enter with me, in imagination, the strange 
woman's house — where, God grant you 
may never enter in any other way. There 
are five wards — Pleasure, Satiety, Discovery, 
Disease, and Death. 

Ward of Pleasure. — The eye is dazzled 
with the magnificence of its apparel, — elas- 
tic velvet, glossy silks, burnished satin, 
crimson drapery, plushy carpets. Exqui- 
site pictures glow upon the walls, carved 
marble adorns every niche. The inmates 
are deceived by these lying shows ; they 
dance, they sing ; with beaming eyes they 
utter softest strains of flattery and graceful 
compliment. They partake the amorous 
wine, and the repast which loads the table. 
They eat, they drink, they are blithe and 
merry. Surely, they should be ; for after 
this brief hour, they shall never know pu- 
rity nor joy again ! For this moment's rev- 
elry, they are selling heaven ! The strange 
woman walks among her guests in all her 
charms ; fans the flame of joy, scatters grate- 
ful odors, and urges on the fatal revelry. 
As her poisoned wine is quaffed, and the 
gay creatures begin to reel, the torches wane 
and cast but a twilight. One by one, the 
guests grow somnolent ; and, at length, 
they all repose. Their cup is exhausted, 



THE STRANGE WOMAN 



205 



their pleasure is forever over, life has ex- 
haled to an essence, and that is consumed! 
While they sleep, servitors, practised to the 
work, remove them all to another Ward. 

Ward of Satiety . — Here reigns a bewilder- 
ing twilight through which can hardly be 
discerned the wearied inmates, yet sluggish 
upon their couches. Overflushed with dance, 
sated with wine '<\nd fruit, a fitful drowsiness 
vexes them. They wake, to crave ; they 
taste, to loathe ; they sleep, to dream ; they 
wake again from unquiet visions. They 
long for the sharp taste of pleasure, so 
grateful yesterday. Again they sink, repin- 
ing to sleep ; by starts, they rouse at an 
ominous dream ; by starts, they hear strange 
cries ! The fruit burns and torments ; the 
wine shoots sharp pains through their pulse. 
Strange wonder fills them. They remember 
the recent joy, as a reveller in tne morning 
thinks of his midnight-madness. The How- 
ing garden and the banquet now seem all 
stripped and gloomy. They meditate re- 
turn ; pensively they long for their native 
spot! At sleepless moments, mighty res- 
olutions form, — substantial as a dream. 
Memory grows dark. Hope will not 
shine. The past is not pleasant ; the pres- 
ent is wearisome ; and the future gloomy. 

The Ward of Discovery. — In the third 
ward no deception remains. The floors are 



2o6 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

bare ; the naked walls drip filth ; the air is 
poisonous with sickly fumes, and echoes 
with mirth concealing hideous misery. 
None supposes that he has been happy. 
The past seems like the dream of the miser, 
who gathers gold spilled like rain upon the 
road, and wakes, clutching his bed, and 
crying " where is it?" On your right 
hand, as you enter, close by the door, is a 
group of fierce felons in deep drink with 
drugged liquor. With red and swollen 
faces, or white and thin ; or scarred with 
ghastly corruption; with scowling brows, 
baleful eyes, bloated lips and demoniac 
grins ; — in person all uncleanly, in morals 
all debauched, in peace, bankrupt — the 
desperate wretches wrangle one with the 
other, swearing bitter oaths, and heaping 
reproaches each upon each ! Around the 
room you see miserable creatures unap- 
pareled, or dressed in rags, sobbing and 
moaning. That one who gazes out at the 
window, calling for her mother and weep- 
ing, was right tenderly and purely bred. 
She has been baptized twice, — once to God, 
and once to the Devil. She sought this 
place in the very vestments of God's house. 
" Call not on thy mother ! she is a saint in 
Heaven, and cannot hear thee ! " Yet, all 
night long she dreams of home, and child- 
hood, and wakes to sigh and weep; and 



THE STRANGE WOMAN 



207 



between her sobs, she cries " mother ! 
mother ! " 

Yonder is a youth, once a servant at 
God's altar. His hair hangs tangled and 
torn ; his eyes are bloodshot ; his face is 
livid ; his fist is clenched. All the day, he 
wanders up and down, cursing sometimes 
himself, and sometimes the wretch that 
brought him hither j and when he sleeps, 
he dreams of Hell ; and then he wakes to 
feel all he dreamed. This is the Ward of 
reality. All know why the first rooms 
looked so gay — they were enchanted ! It 
was enchanted wine they drank ; and 
enchanted fruit they ate : now they know 
the pain of fatal food in every limb ! 

Ward of Disease. — Ye that look wist- 
fully at the pleasant front of this terrific 
house, come with me now, and look long 
into the terror of this Ward ; for here are 
the seeds of sin in their full harvest form ! 
We are in a lazar-room ; its air oppresses 
every sense ; its sights confound our 
thoughts; its sounds pierce our ear; its 
stench repels us ; it is full of diseases. 
Here a shuddering wretch is clawing at his 
breast, to tear away that worm which gnaws 
his heart. By him is another, whose limbs 
are dropping from his ghastly trunk. Next, 
swelters another in reeking filth ; his eyes 
rolling in bony sockets, every breath a 



208 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

pang, and every pang a groan. But yon- 
der, on a pile of rags, lies one whose yells 
of frantic agony appall every ear. Clutch- 
ing his rags with spasmodic grasp, his 
swollen tongue lolling from a blackened 
mouth, his bloodshot eyes glaring and roll- 
ing, he shrieks oaths ; now blaspheming 
God, and now imploring him. He hoots 
and shouts, and shakes his grisly head from 
side to side, cursing or praying ; now call- 
ing death, and then, as if driving away 
fiends, yelling, avaunt ! avaunt ! 

Another has been ridden by pain, until 
he can no longer shriek ; but lies foaming 
and grinding his teeth, and clenches his 
bony hands, until the nails pierce the palm 
— though there is no blood there to issue 
out — trembling all the time with the shud- 
ders and chills of utter agony. The hap- 
piest wretch in all this Ward, is an Idiot ; 
— dropsical, distorted, and moping ; all day 
he wags his head, and chatters, and laughs, 
and bites his nails ; then he will sit 
for hours motionless, with open jaw, 
and glassy eye fixed on vacancy. In this 
Ward are huddled all the diseases of pleas- 
ure. This is the torture-room of the 
strange woman's House, and it excels the 
Inquisition. The wheel, the rack; the bed 
of knives, the roasting fire, the brazen room 
slowly heated, the slivers driven under the 



THE STRANGE WOMAN 



209 



nails, the hot pincers, — what are these to 
the agonies of the last days of licentious 
vice ? Hundreds of rotting wretches would 
change their couch of torment in the 
strange woman's House, for the gloomiest 
terror of the Inquisition, and profit by the 
change. Nature herself becomes the tor- 
mentor. Nature, long trespassed on and 
abused, at length casts down the wretch ; 
searches every vein, makes a road of every 
nerve for the scorching feet of pain to travel 
on, pulls at every muscle, breaks in the 
breast, builds fires in the brain, eats otit the 
skin, and casts living coals of torment on 
the heart. What are hot pincers to the 
envenomed claws of disease ? What is it 
to be put into a pit of snakes and slimy 
toads, and feel their cold coil or piercing 
fang, to the creeping of a whole body of 
vipers? — where every nerve is a viper, and 
every vein a viper, and every muscle a ser- 
pent ; and the whole body, in all its parts, 
coils and twists upon itself in unimaginable 
anguish? I tell you, there is no Inquisi- 
tion so bad as that which the Doctor looks 
upon ! Young man ! I can show you in 
this Ward worse pangs than ever a savage 
produced at the stake ! — than ever a tyrant 
wrung out by engines of torment ! — than 
ever an inquisitor devised ! Every year, 
in every town, die wretches scalded and 
14 



2io LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

scorched with agony. Were the sum of 
all the pain that comes with the last stages 
of vice collected, it would rend the very 
heavens with its outcry; would shake the 
earth ; would even blanch the cheek of In- 
fatuation ! Ye that are listening in the gar- 
den of this strange woman, among her 
cheating flovyers ; ye that are dancing in 
her halls in the first Ward, come hither ; 
look upon her fourth Ward — its vomited 
blood, its sores and fiery blotches, its pru- 
rient sweat, its dissolving ichor, and rotten 
bones ! Stop, young man ! You turn 
your head from this ghastly room ; and 
yet, stop ! — and stop soon, or thou shalt lie 
here ! mark the solemn signals of thy pas- 
sage ! Thou hast had already enough 
of warnings in thy cheek, in thy bosom, in 
thy pangs of premonition ! 

But ah ! every one of you who are danc- 
ing with the covered paces of death, in the 
strange woman's first hall, let me break your 
spell ; for now I shall open the doors of the 
last Ward. Look ! — Listen ! — Witness your 
own end, unless you take quickly a warning ! 

Ward of Death. — No longer does the 
incarnate wretch pretend to conceal her 
cruelty. She thrusts — aye! as if they were 
dirt — she shovels out the wretches. Some 
fall headlong through the rotten floor, — a 
long fall to a fiery bottom. The floor trem- 



THE STRANGE WOMAN 2 II 

bles to deep thunders which roll below. 
Here and there, jets of flame spout up, and 
give a lurid light to the murky hall. Some 
would fain escape ; and flying across the 
treacherous floor, which man never safely 
passed, they go, through pitfalls and 
treacherous traps, with hideous outcries 
and astounding yells, to perdition ! Fiends 
laugh ! The infernal laugh, the cry of 
agony, the thunder of damnation, shake the 
very roof and echo from wall to wall. 

Oh ! that the young might see the end of 
vice before they see the beginning ! I know 
that you shrink from this picture ; but your 
safety requires that you should look long 
into the Ward of Death, that fear may 
supply strength to your virtue. See the 
blood oozing from the wall, the fiery hands 
w r hich pluck the wretches down, the light of 
hell gleaming through, and hear its roar as 
of a distant ocean chafed with storms. Will 
you sprinkle the wall with your blood? — 
will you feed those flames with your flesh? 
will you add your voice to those thundering 
wails? — will you go down a prey through 
the fiery floor of the chamber of death ? 
Believe then the word of God: Her lionse is 
the way to hell, goiiig down to the ehambers 
of death, . . . avoid it, pass not by it y 
turn from it, and pass azvay ! 

I have described the strange woman's 



212 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



House in strong language, and it needed it. 
If your taste shrinks from the description, 
so does mine. Hell, and all the ways of 
hell, when we pierce the cheating disguises 
and see the truth, are terrible and trying to 
behold ; and if men would not walk there, 
neither would we pursue their steps, to 
sound the alarm,, and rather back whom we 



can. 



Allow me to close by directing your at- 
tention to a few points of especial danger. 

I. I solemnly warn you against indulging 
a morbid imagination. In that busy and 
mischievous faculty begins the evil. Were 
it not for his airy imaginations, man might 
stand his own master — not overmatched by 
the worst part of himself. But ah ! these 
summer-reveries, these venturesome dreams, 
these fairy castles, builded for no good pur- 
poses, — they are haunted by impure spirits, 
who will fascinate, bewitch, and corrupt 
y ou . Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed 
art thou, most favored of God, whose 
thoughts are chastened ; whose imagina- 
tion will not breathe or fly in tainted air ; 
and whose path hath been measured by the 
golden reed of Purity. 

May I not paint Purity, as a saintly 
virgin, in spotless white, walking with open 
face, in an air so clear that no vapor can 
stain it ? 



THE STRANGE WOMAN 

" Upon her lightning-brow love proudly sitting, 
Flames out in power, shines out in majesty." 



213 



Her steps are a queen's steps ; God is her 
father, and thou her brother, if thou wilt 
make her thine ! Let thy heart be her 
dwelling ; wear upon thy hand her ring, and 
on thy breast her talisman. 

II. Next to evil imaginations, I warn the 
young of evil companions. Decaying fruit 
corrupts the neighboring fruit. You cannot 
make your head a metropolis of base stories, 
the ear and tongue a highway of immodest 
words, and yet be pure. Another, as well 
as yourself, may throw a spark on the 
magazine of your passions — beware how 
your companions do it! No man is your 
friend who will corrupt you. An impure 
man is every good man's enemy — your 
deadly foe; and all the worse, if he hide his 
poisoned dagger under the cloak of good 
fellowship. Therefore, select your asso- 
ciates, assort them, winnow them, keep the 
grain, and let the wind sweep away the 
chaff 

III. But I warn you, with yet more sol- 
emn emphasis, against evil books and evil 
pictures. There is in every town an under- 
current which glides beneath our feet un- 
suspected by the pure; out of which, not- 
withstanding, our sons scoop many a goblet. 
Books are hidden in trunks, concealed in 



214 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

dark holes ; pictures are stored in sly 
portfolios, or trafficked from hand to hand ; 
and the handiwork of depraved art is seen 
in other forms which ought to make a har- 
lot blush. 

I should think a man would loathe him- 
self, and wake up from owning such things 
as from a horrible nightmare. Those who 
circulate them are incendiaries of morality: 
those who make them, equal the worst 
public criminals. A pure heart would 
shrink from these abominable things as from 
death. France, where religion long ago 
went out smothered in licentiousness, has 
flooded the world with a species of literature 
redolent of depravity. Upon the plea of 
exhibiting nature and man, novels are now 
scooped out of the very lava of corrupt 
passions. They are true to nature, but to 
nature as it exists in knaves and courtesans. 
Under a plea of humanity, we have shown 
up to us, troops of harlots, to prove that 
they are not so bad as purists think; gangs 
of desperadoes, to show that there is nothing 
in crime inconsistent with the noblest 
feelings. We have in French and English 
novels of the infernal school, humane mur- 
derers, lascivious saints, holy infidels, honest 
robbers. These artists never seem lost, 
except when straining after a conception of 
religion. Their devotion is such as might 



THE STRANGE WOMAN 



215 



be expected from thieves, in the purlieus of 
thrice-deformed vice. Exhausted libertines 
are our professors of morality. They scrape 
the very sediment and muck of society to 
mould their creatures ; and their volumes 
are monster-galleries, in which the inhabi- 
tants of old Sodom would have felt at home 
as connoisseurs and critics. Over loathsome 
women, and unutterably vile men, huddled 
together in motley groups, and over all their 
monstrous deeds, their lies, their plots, their 
crimes, their dreadful pleasures, their glory- 
ing conversation, is thrown the checkered 
light of a hot imagination, until they glow 
with an infernal lustre. Novels of the 
French school, and of English imitators, 
are the common-sewers of society, into 
which drain the concentrated filth of the 
worst passions, of the worst creatures, of 
the"*vvorst cities. Such novels come to us- 
impudently pretending to be reformers of 
morals and liberalizers of religion ; they pro- 
pose to instruct our laws, and teach a dis- 
creet humanity to justice ! The Ten Plagues 
have visited our literature ; water is turned 
to blood ; frogs and lice creep and hop over 
our most familiar things, — the couch, the 
cradle, and the bread-trough ; locusts, mur- 
rain, and fire, are smiting every green thing. 
I am ashamed and outraged when I think 
that wretches could be found to open these 



2 i6 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

foreign seals, and let out their plagues upon 
us — that any Satanic Pilgrim should voyage 
to France to dip from the dead sea of her 
abomination, a baptism for our sons. It 
were a mercy to this, to import serpents 
from Africa and pour them out on our 
prairies ; lions from Asia, and free them in 
our forests; lizards and scorpions and black 
tarantulas, from the Indies, and put them in 
our gardens. Men could slay these, but 
those offspring-reptiles of the French mind, 
who can kill these ? You might as well 
draw sword on a plague, or charge a malaria 
with the bayonet. This black-lettered liter- 
ature circulates in this town, floats in our 
stores, nestles in the shops, is fingered and 
read nightly, and hatches in the young mind 
broods of salacious thoughts. While the 
parent strives to infuse Christian purity 
into his child's heart, he is anticipated by 
most accursed messengers of evil ; and the 
heart hisses already like a nest of young 
and nimble vipers. 

IV. Once more, let me persuade you that 
no examples in high places, can justify imi- 
tation in low places. Your purity is too 
precious to be bartered, because an official 
knave tempts by his example. I would that 
every eminent place of state were a sphere 
of light, from which should be flung down 
on your path a cheering glow to guide you 



THE STRANGE WOMAN 



217 



on to virtue. But if these wandering stars, 
reserved I do believe for final blackness of 
darkness, wheel their malign spheres in the 
orbits of corruption, — go not after them. 
God is greater than wicked great men ; 
heaven is higher than the highest places of 
nations ; and if God and heaven are not 
brighter to your eyes than great men in 
high places, then you must take part in their 
doom, when, ere long, God shall dash them 
to pieces ! 

V. Let me beseech you, lastly, to guard 
your heart-purity. Never lose it ; if it be 
gone, you have lost from the casket 
the most precious gift of God. The first 
purity of imagination, of thought, and 
of feeling, if soiled, can be cleansed 
by no fuller's soap ; if lost, cannot 
be found, though sought carefully with 
tears. If a harp be broken, art may repair 
it ; if a light be quenched, the flame may 
enkindle it ; but if a flower be crushed, 
what art can repair it ? — if an odor be wafted 
awav, who can collect or brin^ it back ? 

The heart of youth is a wide prairie. 
Over it hang the clouds of heaven to water 
it, the sun throws its broad sheets of light 
upon it, to wake its life ; out of its bosom 
spring, the long season through, flowers of 
a hundred names and hues, twining to- 
gether their lovely forms, wafting to each 



2i 8 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

other a grateful odor, and nodding each to 
each in the summer-breeze. Oh ! such 
would man be, did he hold that purity of 
heart which God gave him ! But you have 
a depraved heart. It is a vast continent ; 
on it are mountain-ranges of powers, and 
dark deep streams, and pools, and morasses. 
If once the full and terrible clouds of temp- 
tation do settle thick and fixedly upon you, 
and begin to cast down their dreadful 
stores, may God save whom man can never ! 
Then the heart shall feel tides and streams 
of irresistible power, mocking its control, and 
hurrying fiercely down from steep to steep, 
with growing desolation. Your only re- 
source is to avoid the uprising of your 
giant-passions. 

We are drawing near to a festival dav * 
by the usages of ages, consecrated to cele- 
brate the birth of Christ. At his advent, 
God hung out a prophet-star in the heaven; 
guided by it, the wise men journeyed from 
the east and worshipped at his feet. Oh ! 
let the star of Purity hang out to thine eye, 
brighter than the orient orb to the Magi ; 
let it lead thee, not to the Babe, but to His 
feet who now stands in Heaven, a Prince 
and Saviour! If thou hast sinned, one 
look, one touch, shall cleanse thee whilst 

* This Lecture was delivered upon Christmas eve. 



THE STRANGE WOMAN 



219 



thou art worshipping, and thou shalt rise 
up healed. 

Note. — The exceptions taken to the current reformation-novels 
of Godwin, Bulwer, Dickens, (perhaps,) Eugene Sue, and a host of 
others, require a word of explanation. 1. We do not object to 
any reasonable effort at reformation, moral, social, civil, or 
economical — much is needed. So far, the design of this school of 
romancers is praiseworthy. 2. But we doubt the propriety of em- 
ploying fictions as an instrument ; especially fictions wrought to 
produce a stage-effect, a violent thrill, rather than a conviction. 
These works affect the feelings more than the opinions. 3. 
Nine-tenths of novel-readers are the young, the unreflecting, or 
those whose hearts have been macadamized by the incessant 
tramping of ten times ten thousand heroes and heroines, marching 
across their feelings. Efforts at reformation should be directed to 
other readers than these. 4. But the worst is yet to be told. 
Under the pretence of social reformations, the most flagitious vices 
are inculcated. There can be no doubt of it. An analysis of the 
best characters would give pride, lawlessness, passion, revenge, 
lusts, hypocrisies ; in short, a catalogue of vices. Eugene Sue seeks 
to raise the operatives ', to show the ruinous partiality of law, the 
hideous evils of prisons, &c, &c. The design appears well. What 
part of this design are the constant and deliberate lies of Rodolphe, 
the hero ? This wandering prince coolly justifies himself in putting 
out a man's eyes, because the law would slay him if delivered up ! 
— provides means for decoying convicts from prison ! — sets on 
foot atrocious deceptions, to crush deceptions. This is the 
best character in the far-famed Mysteries of Paris. Unques- 
tionably the purest woman is Goualeuse, redeemed from pros- 
titution ! Madame Lucenay lives in unblushing adultery with Saint 
Remy, who proves to be a forger ! We are edified by a scene of 
noble indignation and virtue, in which this woman, who has vio- 
lated the most sacred instincts, and all the sanctities of the family, 
teaches Remy his degradation for violating civil laws ! Admirable 
reform ! An unblushing adulteress preaches so well to her paramour 
forger ! The diabolical voluptuousness of Cecily — the assignations 
of thepure Madame D'Harville — the astonishing reformations pro- 
duced in a single hour, in which harlots turn vestals, murderers 
philanthropists, poachers and marauders more honest than honest 
men — these are but specimens of the instruments by which this 
new and popular reform is changing our morals, and Christian- 
izing us ! What then shall be said of the works of George Sand, 
Masson, Dumas, M. de Balsac and others like them, by whose 
side Eugene Sue is an angel of purity ? A bookseller in a large city 
on the Ohio river, on being asked, of what work he sold the most, 
replied — " 0/ Paul de Kock ! " — the literary prince of nastiness. 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS 



Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart 
cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the 
ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes ; 
but know thou, that for all these things God will 
bring thee into judgment. Eccl. xi. 9. 

I AM to venture the delicate task of repre- 
hension, always unwelcome, but pecu- 
liarly offensive upon topics of public 
popular amusement. I am anxious, in the 
beginning, to put myself right with the 
young. If I satisfy myself, Christian men, 
and the sober community, and do not sat- 
isfy them, my success will be like a physi- 
cian's, whose prescriptions please himself, 
and the relations, and do good to every- 
body except the patient, — he dies. 

Allow me, first of all, to satisfy you that 
I am not meddling with matters which do 
not concern me. This is the impression 
which the patrons and partners of criminal 
amusements study to make upon your 
minds. They represent our duty to be in 

(221) 



222 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

the church, — taking care of doctrines, and 
of our own members. When more than 
this is attempted ; when we speak a word 
for you who are not church-members, we 
are met with the surly answer, " Why do 
you meddle with things which don't con- 
cern you ? If you do not enjoy these 
pleasures, why do you molest those who 
do ? May not men do as they please in 
a free country, without being hung up in 
a gibbet of public remark ? " It is con- 
veniently forgotten, I suppose, that in a 
free country we have the same right to 
criticise pleasure, which others have to 
enjoy it. Indeed, you and I both know, 
young gentlemen, that in coffee-house cir- 
cles, and in convivial feasts nocturnal, the 
Church is regarded as little better than a 
spectacled old beldam, whose impertinent 
eyes are spying everybody's business but 
her own ; and who, too old or too homely 
to be tempted herself, with compulsory vir- 
tue, pouts at the joyous dalliances of the 
young and gay. Religion is called a nun, 
sable with gloomy vestments ; and the 
Church a cloister, where ignorance is 
deemed innocence, and which sends out 
querulous reprehensions of a world, which 
it knows nothing about, and has profess- 
edly abandoned. This is pretty ; and is 
only defective, in not being true. The 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS 



223 



Church is not a cloister, nor her members 
recluses, nor are our censures of vice inter- 
meddling. Not to dwell in generalities, let 
us take a plain and common case : 

A strolling company offer to educate our 
youth ; and to show the community the 
road of morality, which, probably they have 
not seen themselves for twenty years. We 
cannot help laughing at a generosity so 
much above one's means: and when they 
proceed to hew and hack each other with 
rusty iron, to teach our boys valor ; and 
dress up practical mountebanks, to teach 
theoretical virtue; if we laugh somewhat 
more, they turn upon us testily : Do you 
mind your own business , and leave us with 
ours. We do not interfere with your preach- 
ing, do you let alone our acting. 

But softly — may not religious people 
amuse themselves with very diverting men ? 
I hope it is not bigotry to have eyes and 
ears : I hope it is not fanaticism, in the 
use of these excellent senses, for us to 
judge that throwing one's heels higher than 
their head a-dancing, is not exactly the way 
to teach virtue to our daughters ; and that 
women, whose genial warmth of temper- 
ament has led them into a generosity some- 
thing too great, are not the persons to teach 
virtue, at any rate. Oh ! no ; we are told, 
Christians must not know that all this is 



224 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



very singular. Christians ought to think 
that men who are kings and dukes and 
philosophers on the stage, are virtuous 
men, even if they gamble at night, and are 
drunk all day ; and if men are so used to 
comedy, that their life becomes a perpetual 
farce on morality, we have no right to laugh 
at this extra professional acting ! 

Are we meddlers, who only seek the 
good of our own families, and of our own 
community where we live and expect to 
die ? or they, who wander up and down 
without ties of social connection, and with- 
out aim, except of money to be gathered 
off from men's vices? 

I am anxious to put all religious men in 
their right position before you ; and in this 
controversy between them and the gay 
world, to show you the facts upon both 
sides. A floating population, in pairs or 
companies, without leave asked, blow the 
trumpet for all our youth to flock to their 
banners ! Are they related to them ? — are 
they concerned in the welfare of our town ? 
— do they live among us? — do they 
bear any part of our burdens ? — do 
they care for our substantial citizens? 
We grade our streets, build our schools, 
support all our municipal laws, and the 
young men are ours ; our sons, our broth- 
ers, our wards, clerks, or apprentices ; they 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS 



225 



are living in our houses, our stores, our 
shops, and we are their guardians, and take 
care of them in health, and watch them in 
sickness ; yet every vagabond who floats in 
hither, swears and swaggers, as if they were 
all his : and when they offer to corrupt all 
these youth, we paying them round sums 
of money for it, and we get courage finally 
to say that we had rather not; that indus- 
try and honesty are better than expert 
knavery — they turn upon us in great indig- 
nation with, Why don't you mi?id your own 
business — what are you meddling with our 
affairs for ? 

I will suppose a case. With much pains- 
taking, I have saved enough money to buy 
a little garden-spot. I put all around it a 
good fence— I put the spade into it and 
mellow the soil full deep ; . I go to the 
nursery and pick out choice fruit trees — I 
send abroad and select the best seeds of the 
rarest vegetables ; and so my garden thrives. 
I know every inch of it, for I have watered 
every inch with sweat. One morning I am 
awakened by a mixed sound of sawing, 
digging, and delving; and looking out, I 
see a dozen men at work in my garden. I 
run down and find one man sawing out a 
huge hole in the fence. " My dear sir, 
what are you doing ?" " Oh, this high fence 
is very troublesome to climb over; I am 
*5 



226 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

fixing an easier way for folks to get in." 
Another man has headed down several 
choice trees, and is putting in new grafts. 
" Sir, what are you changing the kind for ? " 
" Oh, this kind don't suit me ; I like a new 
kind." One man is digging up my beans, 
to plant cockles; another is rooting up my 
strawberries, to put in parsley ; and another 
is destroying my currants, and gooseberries, 
and raspberries, to plant mustard and James- 
town weed. At last, I lose all patience, 
and cry out, " Well, gentlemen, this will 
never do. I will never tolerate this 
abominable imposition ; you are ruining 
my garden." One of them says, " You old 
hypocritical bigot ! do mind your business, 
and let us enjoy ourselves. Take care of 
your house, and do not pry into our pleas- 
ures." 

Fellow-citizens ! I own that no man could 
so invade your garden ; but men are al- 
lowed thus to invade our town, and destroy 
our children. You will let them evade 
your laws, to fleece and demoralize you ; 
and you sit down under their railing, as 
though you were the intruders! — just as if 
the man, who drives a thief out of his 
house, ought to ask the rascal's pardon for 
interfering with his little plans of pleasure 
and profit ! 

Every parent has a right — every citizen 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS 



22/ 



and every minister has the same right, to 
expose traps, which men have to set them ; 
the same right to prevent mischief, which 
men have to plot it; the same right to 
attack vice, which vice has to attack virtue; 
a better right to save our sons and brothers, 
and companions, than artful men have to 
destroy them. 

The necessity of amusement, is admitted 
on all hands. There is an appetite of the 
eye, of the ear, and of every sense, for 
which God has provided the material. 
Gaiety of every degree, this side of puerile 
levity, is wholesome to the body, to the 
mind, and to the morals. Nature is a vast 
repository of manly enjoyments. The 
magnitude of God's works is not less ad- 
mirable than its exhilarating beauty. The 
rudest forms have something of beauty ; 
the ruggedest strength is graced with some 
charm ; the very pins, and rivets, and clasps 
of nature, are attractive by qualities of 
beauty more than is necessary for mere 
utility. The sun could go down without 
gorgeous clouds ; evening could advance 
without its evanescent brilliance; trees 
might have flourished without symmetry ; 
flowers have existed without odor, and 
fruit without flavor. When I have jour- 
neyed through forests, where ten thousand 
shrubs and vines exist without apparent 



228 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

use ; through prairies, whose undulations 
exhibit sheets of flowers innumerable, and 
absolutely dazzling the eye with their 
prodigality of beauty — beauty, not a tithe 
of which is ever seen by man — I have said, 
it is plain that God is himself passionately 
fond of beauty, and the earth is his garden, 
as an acre is man's. God has made us like 
Himself, to be pleased by the universal 
beauty of the world. He has made pro- 
vision in nature, in society, and in the fam- 
ily, for amusement and exhilaration enough 
to fill the heart with the perpetual sunshine 
of delight. 

Upon this broad earth, purfled with 
flowers, scented with odors, brilliant in 
colors, vocal with echoing and re-echoing 
melody, I take my stand against all 
demoralizing pleasure. Is it not enough 
that our Father's house is so full of dear 
delights, that we must wander prodigal to 
the swine-herd for husks, and to the slough 
for drink ? — when the trees of God's 
heritage bend over our head, and solicit our 
hand to pluck the golden fruitage, must we 
still go in search of the apples of Sodom 
— outside fair, and inside ashes ? 

Men shall crowd to the Circus to hear 
clowns, and see rare feats of horsemanship ; 
but a bird may poise beneath the very sun, 
or flying downward, swoop from the high 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS 



22C) 



heaven ; then flit with graceful ease hither 
and thither, pouring liquid song as if it 
were a perennial fountain of sound — no 
man cares for that. 

Upon the stage of life, the vastest trage- 
dies are performing in every act; nations 
pitching headlong to their final catastrophe ; 
others, raising their youthful forms to begin 
the drama of their existence. The world 
of society is as full of exciting interest, 
as nature is full of beauty. The great 
dramatic throng of life is hustling along — 
the wise, the fool, the clown, the miser, the 
bereaved, the broken-hearted. Life mingles 
before us smiles and tears, sighs and laugh- 
ter, joy and gloom, as the spring mingles 
the winter-storm and summer-sunshine. 
To this vast Theatre which God hath builded, 
where stranger plays are seen than ever 
author writ, man seldom cares to come. 
When God dramatizes, when nations act, 
or all the human kind_ conspire to educe 
the vast catastrophe, men sleep and snore, 
and let the busy scene go on, unlooked, 
unthought upon ; and turn from all its varied 
magnificence to hunt out some candle- 
lighted hole and gaze at drunken ranters, 
or cry at the piteous virtue of harlots in 
distress. It is my object then, not to with- 
draw the young from pleasure, but from 
unworthy pleasures ; not to lessen their 



230 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



enjoyments, but to increase them by re- 
jecting the counterfeit and the vile. 

Of gambling, I have already sufficiently 
spoken. Of cock-fighting, bear-baiting, 
and pugilistic contests, I need to speak but 
little. These are the desperate excitements 
of debauched men ; but no man becomes 
desperately criminal, until he has been 
genteelly criminal. No one spreads his 
sail upon such waters, at first ; these brutal 
amusements are but the gulf into which 
flow all the streams of criminal pleasures ; 
and they who embark upon the river, are 
sailing toward the gulf. Wretches who 
have waded all the depths of iniquity, and 
burned every passion to the socket, find in 
rage and blows and blood, the only stimulus 
of which they are susceptible. You are 
training yourselves to be just such wretches, 
if you are exhausting your passions in 
illicit indulgences. 

As it is impossible to analyze, separately, 
each vicious amusement proffered to the 
young, I am compelled to select two, each 
the representative of a clan. Thus, the 
reasonings applied to the amusement of 
Racing,' apply equally well to all violent 
amusements which congregate indolent and 
dissipated men, by ministering intense ex- 
citement. The reasonings applied to the 
Theatre, with some modifications, apply to 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS 



23I 



the Circus, to promiscuous balls, to night- 
revelling, bacchanalian feasts, and to other 
similar indulgences. 

Many, who are not in danger, may in- 
cline to turn from these pages ; they live in 
rural districts, in villages, or towns, and are 
out of the reach of jockeys, and actors, and 
gamblers. This is the very reason why 
you should read. We are such a migratory, 
restless people, that our home is usually 
everywhere but at home ; and almost every 
young man makes annual, or biennial visits 
to famous cities ; conveying produce to 
market, or purchasing wares and goods. 
It is at such times that the young are in 
extreme danger; for they are particularly 
anxious, at such times, to appear at their 
full age. A young man is ashamed, in a 
great hotel, to seem raw and not to know 
the mysteries of the bar and of the town. 
They put on a very remarkable air, which 
is meant for ease ; they affect profusion of 
expense ; they think it meet for a gentle- 
man to know all that certain other city- 
gentlemen seem proud of knowing. As 
sober citizens are not found lounging at 
Hotels ; and the gentlemanly part of the 
travelling community are usually retiring, 
modest, and unnoticeable, — the young are 
left to come in contact chiefly with a very 
flash class of men who swarm about citv- 



232 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



Restaurateurs and Hotels, — swollen clerks, 
crack sportsmen, epicures, and rich, green 
youth, seasoning. These are the most 
numerous class which engage the attention 
of the young. They bustle in the sitting 
room, or crowd the bar, assume the chief 
seats at the table, and play the petty lord 
in a manner so brilliant, as altogether to 
dazzle our poor country boy, who mourns 
at his deficient education, at the poverty of 
his rural oaths, and the meagerness of 
those illicit pleasures, which he formerly 
nibbled at with mouselike stealth ; and he 
sighs for these riper accomplishments. Be- 
sides, it is well known, that large com- 
mercial establishments have, residing at 
such hotels, well appointed clerks to draw 
customers to their counter. It is their 
business to make your acquaintance, to fish 
out the probable condition of your funds, to 
sweeten your temper with delicate tit-bits 
of pleasure ; to take you to the Theatre, and 
a little J hirther on, if need be; to draw you 
in to a generous supper, and initiate you to 
the high life of men whose whole life is only 
the varied phases of lust, gastronomical 
or amorous. 

Besides these, there lurk in such places 
lynx-eyed procurers; men who have an 
interest in your appetites ; who look upon 
a young man, with some money, just as a 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS 



233 



butcher looks upon a bullock — a thing of 
so many pounds avoirdupois, of so much 
beef, so much tallow, and a hide. If you 
have nothing, they will have nothing to do 
with you ; if you have means, they under- 
take to supply you with the disposition to 
use them. They know the city, they know 
its haunts, they know its secret doors, its 
blind passages, its spicy pleasures, its racy 
vices, clear down to the mud-slime of the 
very bottom. 

Meanwhile, the accustomed restraint of 
home cast off, the youth feels that he is un- 
known, and may do what he chooses, un- 
exposed. There is, moreover, an intense 
curiosity to see many things of which he 
has long ago heard and wondered; and it is 
the very art and education of vice, to make 
itself attractive. It comes with garlands of 
roses about its brow, with nectar in its 
goblet, and love upon its tongue. 

If you have, beforehand, no settled 
opinions as to what is right and what is 
wrong; if your judgment is now, for the 
first time, to be formed upon the propriety 
of your actions; if you are not controlled 
by settled principles, there is scarcely a 
chance for your purity. 

For this purpose, then, I desire to discuss 
these things, that you may settle your 
opinions and principles before temptation 



234 LECTURES TO YOUNG ME 1ST 

assails you. As a ship is built upon the 
dry shore, which afterwards is to dare the 
storm and brave the sea, so would I build 
you staunch and strong, ere you be launched 
abroad upon life. 

I. Racing. This amusement justifies its 
existence by the plea of utility. We will 
examine it upon its own ground. Who are 
the patrons of the Turf? — farmers? — 
laborers ? — men who are practically the 
most interested in the improvement of stock? 
The unerring instinct of self-interest would 
lead these men to patronize the Course, if its 
utility were real. It is notorious that these 
are not the patrons of racing. It is sustained 
by two classes of men — gambling jockeys 
and jaded rich men. In England, and in 
our own country, where the turf-sports are 
freshest, they owe their existence entirely to 
the extraordinary excitement which they 
afford to dissipation, or to cloyed appetites. 
For those industrial purposes for which the 
Jiorseis chiefly valuable, for roadsters, hacks, 
and cart-horses, what do the patrons of the 
turf care? Their whole anxiety is centred 
upon winning cups and stakes; and that is 
incomparably the best blood which will run 
the longest space in the shortest time. The 
points required for this are not, and never 
will be, the points for substantial service. 
And it is notorious, that racing in England 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS 



235 



deteriorated the stock in such important 
respects, that the light-cavalry and dragoon- 
service suffered severely, until dependence 
upon turf stables was abandoned. New 
England, where racing is almost unknown, 
is to this day the place where the horse 
exists in the finest qualities ; and for all 
economical purposes, Virginia and Ken- 
tucky must yield to New England. Ex- 
cept for the sole purpose of racing, an 
Eastern horse brings a higher price than any 
other. 

The other class of patrons who sustain a 
Course are mere gambling jockeys. As 
crows to a corn-field, or vultures to their 
prey; as flies to summer-sweet, so to the 
annual races, flow the whole tribe of game- 
sters and pleasure-lovers. It is the Jerusa- 
lem of wicked men ; and thither the tribes 
go up, like Israel of old, but for a far differ- 
ent sacrifice. No form of social abomination 
is unknown or unpractised ; and if all the 
good that is claimed, and a hundred times 
more, were done to horses, it would be a 
dear bargain. To ruin men for the sake of 
improving horses ; to sacrifice conscience 
and purity for the sake of good bones and 
muscles in a beast ; this is paying a little too 
much for good brutes. Indeed, the shame- 
less immorality, the perpetual and growing 
dishonesty, the almost immeasurable secret 



236 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



villany of gentlemen of the turf, has alarmed 
and disgusted many stalwart racers, who, 
having no objection to some evil, are ap- 
palled at the very ocean of depravity which 
rolls before them. I extract the words of 
one of the leading sportsmen of England. 
"Hozv many fine domains have been shared 
among these hosts of rapacious sharks, dur- 
ing the last two hundred years ; and, unless 
the system be altered, how many more are 
doomed to fall into the same gulf ! For, we 
lament to say, the evil has increased: all 
heretofore has been ' tarts and cheese- 
cakes ' to the villanous proceedings of the last 
twenty years on the English turf." 

I will drop this barbarous amusement, 
with a few questions. 

What have you, young men, to do with 
the turf, admitting it to be what it claims, a 
school for horses ? Are you particularly 
interested in that branch of learning ? 

Is it safe to accustom yourselves to such 
tremendous excitement as that of rac- 
ing? 

Is the invariable company of such places 
of a kind which you ought to be found in ? 
— will races make you more moral ? — more 
industrious ? — more careful ? — economical ? 
— trustworthy ? 

You who have attended them, what ad- 
vice would you give a young man, a younger 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS 



237 



brother for instance, who should seriously 
ask if he had better attend ? 

I digress to say one word to women. 
When a Course was opened at Cincinnati, 
ladies would not attend it : when one was 
opened here, ladies would not attend it : 
For very good reasons — they were ladies. 
If it be said that they attend the Races at 
the South and in England, I reply, that they 
do a great many other things which you 
would not choose to do. 

Roman ladies could see hundreds of 
gladiators stab and hack each other — could 
you ? Spanish ladies can see savage bull-, 
fights — would you? It is possible for a 
modest woman to countenance very ques- 
tionable practices, where the customs of 
society and the universal public opinion 
approve them. But no woman can set her- 
self against public opinion, in favor of an 
immoral sport, without being herself im- 
moral ; for, if worse be wanting, it is im- 
morality enough for a woman to put herself 
where her reputation will lose its suspicious- 
less lustre. 

II. The Theatre. Desperate efforts 
are made, year by year, to resuscitate this 
expiring evil. Its claims are put forth with 
vehemence. Let us examine them. 

The drama cultivates the taste. Let the 
appeal be to facts. Let the roll of English 



238 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



literature be explored — our Poets, Ro- 
mancers, Historians, Essayists, Critics, and 
Divines — and for what part of their mem- 
orable writings are we indebted to the 
Drama? If we except one period of our 
literature, the claim is wholly groundless ; 
and at this day, the truth is so opposite to 
the claim, that extravagance, affectation, 
and rant, are proverbially denominated 
theatrical. If agriculture should attempt to 
supersede the admirable implements of hus- 
bandry, now in use, by the primitive plough 
or sharpened sticks, it would not be more 
absurd than to advocate that clumsy ma- 
chine of literature, the Theatre, by the side 
of the popular lecture, the pulpit, and the 
press. It is not congenial to our age or 
necessities. Its day is gone by — it is in its 
dotage, as might be suspected, from the 
weakness of the garrulous apologies which 
it puts forth. 

It is a school of morals. Yes, doubtless ! 
So the guillotine is defended on the plea of 
humanity. Inquisitors declare their racks 
and torture-beds to be the instruments of 
love, affectionately admonishing the fallen 
of the error of their ways. The slave-trade 
has been defended on the plea of humanity, 
and slavery is now defended for its mercies. 
Were it necessary for any school or party, 
doubtless we should hear arguments to 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS 



239 



prove the DeviPs grace, and the utility of 
his agency among men. 

But, let me settle these impudent pre- 
tensions to Theatre-virtue, by the home 
thrust of a few plain questions. 

Will any of you who have been to The- 
atres, please to tell me whether virtue ever 
received important accessions from the gal- 
lery of Theatres ? 

Will you tell me whether the Pit is a 
place where an ordinarily modest man 
would love to seat his children ? 

Was ever a Theatre known where a 
prayer at the opening, and a prayer at the 
close,would not be tormentingly discordant ? 

How does it happen, that in a school for 
morals, the teachers never learn their own 
lessons ? 

Would you allow a son or daughter to 
associate alone with actors or actresses ? 

Do these men who promote virtue so 
zealously when acting, take any part in 
public moral enterprises, when their stage 
dresses are off? 

Which would surprise you most, to see 
actors steadily at Church, or to see Chris- 
tians steadily at a Theatre ? Would not 
both strike you as singular incongruities ? 

What is the reason that loose and aban- 
doned men abhor religion in a Church, and 
love it so much in a Theatre? 



240 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



Since the Theatre is the handmaid of 
virtue, why are drinking houses so neces- 
sary to its neighborhood, yet so offensive to 
Churches ? The trustees of the Tremont 
Theatre in Boston, publicly protested 
against an order of council forbidding liquor 
to be sold on the premises, on the ground 
that it was impossible to support the The- 
atre without it. 

I am told that Christians do attend the 
Theatres. Then I will tell them the story 
of the Ancients. A holy monk reproached 
the devil for stealing a young man who was 
found at the Theatre. He promptly re- 
plied, " I found him on my premises, and 
took him." 

But, it is said, if Christians would take 
Theatres in hand, instead of abandoning 
them to loose men, they might become the 
handmaids of religion. 

The Church has had an intimate ac- 
quaintance with the Theatre for eighteen 
hundred years. During that period, every 
available agent for the diffusion of morality 
has been earnestly tried. The Drama has 
been tried. The result is, that familiarity 
has bred contempt and abhorrence. If, 
after so long and thorough an acquaintance, 
the Church stands the mortal enemy of 
Theatres, the testimony is conclusive. It 
is the evidence of generations speaking by 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS 



241 



the most sober, thinking, and honest men. 
Let not this vagabond prostitute pollute 
any longer the precincts of the Church, with 
impudent proposals of alliance. When the 
Church needs an alliance it will not look for 
it in the kennel. Ah ! what a blissful scene 
would that be — the Church and Theatre 
imparadised in each other's arms ! What a 
sweet conjunction would be made, could we 
build our Churches so as to preach in the 
morning, and play in them by night ! And 
how melting it would be, beyond the love 
of David and Jonathan, to see minister and 
actor in loving embrace; one slaying Satan 
by direct thrusts of plain preaching, and 
the other sucking his very life out by the 
-enchantment of the Drama ! To this mil- 
lennial scene of Church and Theatre, I only 
suggest a single improvement : that the 
vestry be enlarged to a ring for a Circus, 
when not wanted for prayer-meetings ; that 
the Sabbath-school room should be fur- 
nished with card-tables, and useful texts of 
scripture might be printed on the cards, for 
the pious meditations of gamblers during 
the intervals of play and worship. 

But if these places are put down, men will 
go to worse ones. Where will they find 
worse ones ? Are those who go to the 
Theatre, the Circus, the Race-course, the 
men who abstain from worse places ? It is 
16 



242 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



notorious that the crowd of theatre-goers 
are vomited up from these worse places. It 
is notorious that the Theatre is the door to 
all the sinks of iniquity. It is through this 
infamous place that the young learn to love 
those vicious associates and practices to 
which, else, they would have been strangers. 
Half the victims of the gallows and of the 
Penitentiary will tell you, that these schools 
for morals were to them the gate of de- 
bauchery, the porch of pollution, the vesti- 
bule of the very house of Death. 

The Drama makes one acquainted with 
hitman life, and with nature. It is too 
true. There is scarcely an evil incident to 
human life, which may not be fully learned 
at the Theatre. Here flourishes every 
variety of wit — ridicule of sacred things, 
burlesques of religion, and licentious double- 
entendre s. Nowhere can so much of this 
lore be learned, in so short a time, as at the 
Theatre. There one learns how pleasant a 
thing is vice ; amours are consecrated ; 
license is prospered ; and the young come 
away alive to the glorious liberty of con- 
quest and lust. But the- stage is not the 
only place about the Drama where human 
nature is learned. In the Boxes the voung 
may make the acquaintance of those who 
abhor home and domestic quiet ; of those 
who glory in profusion and obtrusive dis- 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS 



243 



play; of those who expend all, and more 
than their earnings, upon gay clothes and 
jewelry ; of those who think it no harm to 
borrow their money without leave from their 
employer's till ; of those who despise vulgar 
appetite, but affect polished and genteel 
licentiousness. Or, he may go to the Pit, 
and learn the whole round of villain-life from 
masters in the art. He may sit down among 
thieves, blood-loving scoundrels, swindlers, 
broken-down men of pleasure — the coarse, 
the vulgar, the debauched, the inhuman, the 
infernal. Or, if still more of human nature 
* is wished, he can learn yet more ; for the 
Theatre epitomizes every degree of corrup- 
tion.. Let the virtuous young scholar go to 
the Gallery, and learn there, decency, mod- 
esty, and refinement, among the quarrelling, 
drunken, ogling, mincing, brutal women of 
the brothel ! Ah ! there is no place like 
the Theatre for learning human nature ! A 
young man can gather up more experi- 
mental knowledge here in a week, than else- 
where in half a year. But I wonder that 
the Drama should ever confess the fact; 
and yet more, that it should lustily plead in 
self-defence, that Theatres teach men so much 
of human nature ! Here are brilliant bars, 
to teach the young to drink; here are gay 
companions, to undo in half an hour the 
scruples formed by an education of years ; 



244 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



here are pimps of pleasure, to delude the 
brain with bewildering sophisms of license ; 
here is pleasure, all flushed in its gayest, 
boldest, most fascinating forms ; and few 
there be who can resist its wiles, and fewer 
yet who can yield to them and escape ruin. 
If you would pervert the taste — go to the 
Theatre. If you would imbibe false views 
go to the Theatre. If you would efface as 
speedily as possible all qualms of conscience 
— go to the Theatre. If you would put your- 
self irreconcilably against the spirit of virtue 
and religion — go to the Theatre. If you 
would be infected with each particular vice 
in the catalogue of Depravity — go to the 
Theatre. Let parents, who wish to make 
their children weary of home and quiet 
domestic enjoyments, take them to the 
Theatre. If it be desirable for the young to 
loathe industry and didactic reading, and 
burn for fierce excitements, and seek them 
by stealth or through pilferings, if need be 
— then send them to the Theatre. It is 
notorious that the bill of fare at these tem- 
ples of pleasure is made up to the taste of 
the lower appetites ; that low comedy, and 
lower farce, running into absolute obscenity, 
are the only means of filling a house. 
Theatres which should exhibit nothing but 
the classic Drama, would exhibit it to empty 
seats. They must be corrupt, to live; 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS 



245 



and those who attend them will be cor- 
rupted. 

Let me turn your attention to several 
reasons which should incline every young- 
man to forswear such criminal amusements. 

I. The first reason is, their zvaste of time. 
I do not mean that they waste only the 
time consumed while you are within them ; 
but they make you waste your time after- 
wards. You will go once, and wish to go 
again ; you will go twice, and seek it a third 
time; you will go a third time, — a fourth; 
and whenever the bill flames, you will be 
seized with a restlessness and craving to go, 
until the appetite wiil become a passion. 
You will then waste your nights : your 
mornings being heavy, melancholy, and 
stupid, you will waste them. Your day 
will next be confused and crowded : your 
duties poorly executed or deferred; habits 
of arrant shiftlessness will ensue; and day 
by day, industry will grow tiresome, and 
leisure sweeter, until you are a waster of 
time — an idle man ; and if not a rogue, you 
will be a fortunate exception. 

II. You ought not to countenance these 
things because they will waste your money. 
Young gentlemen ! squandering is as shame- 
ful as hoarding. A fool can throw away, 
and a fool can lock up ; but it is a wise man, 
who, neither parsimonious nor profuse, 



246 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



steers the middle course of generous econ- 
omy and frugal liberality. A young man, at 
first, thinks that all he spends at such places, 
is the ticket-price of the Theatre, or the 
small bet on the races; and this he knows 
is not much. But this is certainly not the 
whole bill — nor half. 

First, you pay your entrance. But there 
are a thousand petty luxuries which one 
must not neglect, or custom will call him 
niggard. You must buy your cigars, and 
your friend's. You must buy your juleps, 
and treat' in your turn. You must occasion- 
ally wait on your lady, and she must be 
comforted with divers confections. You 
cannot go to such places in homely work- 
ing dress ; new and costlier clothes must be 
bought. All yourcompanions have jewelry, 
— you will want a ring, or a seal, or a gold 
watch, or an ebony cane, a silver toothpick, 
or quizzing glass. Thus, item presses upon 
item, and in the year a long bill runs up of 
money spent for little trifles. 

But if all this money could buy you off 
from the yet worse effects, the bargain 
would not be so dear. But compare, if you 
please, this mode of expenditure with the 
principle of your ordinary expense. In all 
ordinary and business-transactions you get 
an equivalent for your money, — either food 
for support, or clothes for comfort, or per- 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS 



247 



manent property. But when a young man 
has spent one or two hundred dollars for 
the Theatre, Circus, Races, Balls, and rev- 
elling, what has he to show for it at the end 
of the year? Nothing at all good, and 
much that is bad. You sink your money 
as really as if you threw it into the sea; 
and you do it in such a way that you form 
habits of careless expense. You lose all 
sense of the value of property ; and when a 
man sees no value in property, he will see 
no necessity for labor ; and when he is lazy, 
and careless of property, both, he will be 
dishonest. Thus, a habit which seems inno- 
cent — the habit of trifling with property — 
often degenerates to worthlessness, indo- 
lence, and roguery. 

III. Such pleasures are incompatible with 
3'our ordinary pursuits. 

The very way to ruin an honest business 
is to be ashamed of it, or to put alongside 
of it something which a man loves better. 
There can be no industrial calling so exciting 
as the Theatre, the Circus, and the Races. 
If you wish to make your real business 
very stupid and hateful, visit such places. 
After the glare of the Theatre has dazzled 
your eyes, your blacksmith-shop will look 
smuttier than ever it did before. After you 
have seen stalwart heroes pounding their 
antagonists, you will find it a dull business 



248 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



to pound iron; and a valiant apprentice 
who has seen such gracious glances of love 
and such rapturous kissing of hands, will 
hate to dirty his heroic fingers with mortar, 
or by rolling felt on the hatter's board. If 
a man had a homely, but most useful wife 
—patient, kind, intelligent, hopeful in 
sorrow, and cheerful in prosperity, but yet 
very plain, very homely, — would he be wise 
to bring under his roof a fascinating and art- 
ful beauty? would the contrast, and her 
wiles, make him love his own wife better ? 
Young gentlemen, your wives are your in- 
dustrial calling ! These raree-shows are 
artful jades, dressed up on purpose to pur- 
loin your affections. Let no man be led ta 
commit adultery with a Theatre, against 
the rights of his own trade. 

IV. Another reason why you should let 
alone these deceitful pleasures is, that they 
will engage you in bad company. To the 
Theatre, the Ball, the Circus, the Race- 
course, the gaming-table, resort all the 
idle, the dissipated, the rogues, the licen- 
tious, the epicures, the gluttons, the artful 
jades, the immodest prudes, the joyous, the 
worthless, the refuse. When you go, you 
will not, at first, take introduction to them 
all, but to those nearest like yourself; by 
them the way will be open to others. And 
a very great evil has befallen a young 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS 



249 



man, when wicked men feel that they 
have a right to his acquaintance. When 
I see a gambler slapping a young me- 
chanic on the back ; or a lecherous scoun- 
drel suffusing a young man's cheek by a 
story at which, despite his blushes, he yet 
laughs ; I know the youth has been guilty 
of criminal indiscretion, or these men 
could not approach him thus. That is a 
brave and strong heart that can stand up 
pure in a company of artful wretches. 
When wicked men mean to seduce a 
young man, so tremendous are the odds 
in favor of practiced experience against 
innocence, that there is not one chance 
in a thousand, if the young man lets them 
approach him. Let every young man re- 
member that he carries, by nature, a 
breast of passions just such as bad men 
have. With youth they slumber; but 
temptation can wake them, bad men can 
influence them, they know the road, they 
know how to serenade the heart ; how to 
raise the sash, and elope with each pas- 
sion. There is but one resource for in- 
nocence among men or women ; and that 
is, an embargo upon all commerce of bad 
men. Bar the window ! — bolt the door ! 
— nor answer their strain, if they charm 
never so wisely ! In no other way can 
you be safe. So well am I assured of 



250 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



the power of bad men to seduce the err- 
ing purity of man, that I pronounce it 
next to impossible for man or woman to 
escape, if they permit bad men to approach 
and dally with them. Oh ! there is more 
than magic in temptation, when it beams 
down upon the heart of man, like the sun 
upon a morass ! At the noontide-hour 
of purity, the mists shall rise and wreathe a 
thousand fantastic forms of delusion ; and a 
sudden freak of passion, a single gleam of 
the imagination, one sudden rush of the 
capricious heart, and the resistance of 
years may be prostrated in a moment, the 
heart entered by the besieging enemy, its 
rooms sought out, and every lovely affec- 
tion rudely seized by the invader's lust, 
and given to ravishment and to ruin ! 

V. Putting together in one class, all gam- 
blers, circus-riders, actors and racing-jock- 
eys, I pronounce them to be men who live 
off of society without returning any useful 
equivalent for their support. At the most 
lenient sentence, they are a band of gay 
idlers. They do not throw one cent into the 
stock of public good. They do not make 
shoes, or hats, or houses, or harness, or any- 
thing else that is useful. A hostler is useful ; 
he performs a necessary office. A scullion is 
useful ; somebody must act his part. A 
street-sweeper, a chimney-sweep, the seller 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS 



251 



of old clothes, a scavenger, a tinker, a boot- 
black — all these men are respectable ; for 
though their callings are very humble, they 
are founded on the real wants of society. 
The bread which such men eat, is the rep- 
resentation of what they have done for so- 
ciety ; nof the bread of idleness, but of 
usefulness. But what do pleasure-mongers 
do for a living ? — what do thev invent ? — 
what do they make ? — what do they repair ? 
— what do they for the mind, for the body, 
for man, or child, or beast ? The dog that 
gnaws a refuse bone, pays for it in barking 
at a thief. The cat that purrs its gratitude 
for a morsel of meat, will clear our house 
of rats. But what do we get in return for 
supporting whole loads of play-mongers, 
and circus-clowns ? They eat, they drink, 
they giggle, they grimace, they strut in 
gairish clothes — and what else ? They 
have not afforded even useful amusement; 
they are professional laugh-makers ; their 
trade is comical or tragical buffoonery — the 
trade of tickling men. We do not feel any 
need of them, before they come ; and when 
they leave, the only effects resulting from 
their visits are, unruly boys, aping appren- 
tices, and unsteady workmen. 

Now, upon principles of mere political 
economy, is it wise to support a growing 
class of improvident idlers ? If at the top 



252 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN* 



of society, the government should erect a 
class of favored citizens, and pamper their 
idleness with fat pensions, the indignation 
of the whole community would break out 
against such privileged aristocrats. But we 
have, at the bottom of society, a set of wan- 
dering, jesting, dancing, fiddling aristocrats, 
whom we support for the sake of their ca- 
pers, grins, and caricatures upon life, and 
no one seems to think this an evil. 

VI. But even this is cheap and wise, 
compared with the evil which I shall men- 
tion. If these morality-teachers could 
guarantee us against all evil from their 
doings, we might pay their support and 
think it a cheap bargain. The direct and 
necessary effect of their pursuit, however, is 
to demoralize men. 

Those who defend Theatres would scorn 
to admit actors into their society. It is 
within the knowledge of all, that men, who 
thus cater for public pleasure, are excluded 
from respectable society. The general 
fact is not altered by the exceptions — 
and honorable exceptions there are. But 
where there is one Siddons, and one Ellen 
Tree, and one Fanny Kemble, how many 
hundred actresses are there who dare not 
venture within modest society ? Where 
there is one Garrick and Sheridan, how 
many thousand licentious wretches are 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS 



253 



there, whose acting is but a means of sen- 
sual indulgence ? In the support of gam- 
blers, circus-riders, actors, and racing-jock- 
eys; a Christian and industrious people are 
guilty of supporting mere mischief-makers 
— men whose very heart is diseased, and 
whose sores exhale contagion to all 
around them. We pay moral assassins to 
stab the purity of our children. We warn 
our sons of temptation, and yet plant the 
seeds which shall bristle with all the spikes 
and thorns of the worst temptation. If to 
this strong language, you answer, that 
these men are generous and jovial, that 
their very business is to please , that they do 
not mean to do harm, — I reply, that I do not 
charge them with trying to produce immo- 
rality, but with pursuing a course which 
produces it, whether they try or not. An 
evil example does harm by its own liberty, 
without asking leave. Moral disease, like 
the plague, is contagious, whether the pa- 
tient wishes it or not. A vile man infects 
his children in spite of himself. Criminals 
make criminals, just as taint makes taint, 
disease makes disease, plagues make 
plagues. Those who run the gay round of 
pleasure cannot help dazzling the young, 
confounding their habits, and perverting 
their morals — it is the very nature of their 
employment. 



254 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



These demoralizing professions could not 
be sustained but by the patronage of moral 
men. Where do the clerks, the appren- 
tices, the dissipated, get their money which 
buys an entrance ? From whom is that 
money drained, always, in every land, which 
supports vice ? Unquestionably from the 
good, the laborious, the careful. The skill, 
the enterprise, the labor, the good morals 
of every nation, are always taxed for the ex- 
penses of vice. Jails are built out of honest 
men's earnings. Courts are supported from 
peaceful men's property. Penitentiaries are 
built by the toil of virtue. Crime never 
pays its own way. Vice has no hands to 
work, no head to calculate. Its whole 
faculty is to corrupt and to waste ; and 
good men, directly or indirectly, foot the 
bill. 

At this time, when we are waiting in vain 
for the return of that bread which we waste- 
fully cast upon the waters ; when, all over 
the sea, men are fishing up the wrecks of 
those argosies, and full freighted fortunes, 
which foundered in the sad storm of recent 
times, — some question might be asked 
about the economy of vice ; the economy 
of paying for our sons' idleness ; the econ- 
omy of maintaining a whole lazy profession 
of gamblers, racers, actresses, and actors, — 
human, equine and belluine : — whose errand 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS 



25? 



is mischief, and luxury, and license, and 
giggling folly. It ought to be asked of men 
who groan at a tax to pay their honest 
foreign debts, whether they can be taxed to 
pay the bills of mountebanks ? * 

It is astonishing how little the influence 
of those professions has been considered, 
which exert themselves mainly to delight 
the sensual feelings of men. That whole 
race of men, whose camp is the Theatre, the 
Circus, the Turf, or the Gaming-table, is a 

* We cannot pay for honest loans, but we can pay Elssler hun- 
dreds of thousands for being an airy sylph / America can pay 
vagabond-fiddlers, strumpet-dancers, fashionable actors, dancing- 
horses, and boxing-men ! Heaven forbid that these should want ! — 
but to pay honest debts, — indeed, indeed, we have honorable 
scruples of conscience about that ! ! 

Let our foreign creditors dismiss their fears, and forgive us the: 
commercial debt ; write no more drowsy letters about public faith ; 
let them write spicy comedies, and send over fiddlers, and dancers, 
and actors, and singers ; — they will soon collect the debt and keep us- 
good-natured ! After every extenuation — hard times, deficient cur- 
rency, want of market, &c, there is a deeper reason than these at 
the bottom of our inert indebtedness. Living among the body of 
the people, and having nothing to lose or gain by my opinions, I 
must say plainly, that the community are not sensitive to the dis- 
grace of flagrant public bankruptcy ; they do not seem to care 
whether their public debt be paid or not. I perceive no enthusiasm 
on that subject : it is not a topic for either party, nor of anxious 
private conversation. A profound indebtedness, ruinous to our 
credit and to our morals, is allowed to lie at the very bottom of the 
abyss of dishonest indifference. 

Men love to be taxed for their lusts ; there is an open exchequer 
for licentiousness, and for giddy pleasure. We grow suddenly sav- 
ing, when benevolence asks alms, or justice duns for debts ; we dole 
a pittance to suppliant creditors, to be rid of their clamor. But let 
the divine Fanny, with evolutions extremely efficacious upon the 
feelings, fire the enthusiasm of a whole Theatre of men, whose ap- 
plauses rise — as she does ; let this courageous dancer, almost liter- 
ally true to nature, display her adventurous feats before a thousand 
men, and the very miser will turn spendthrift; the land which will 
not pay its honest creditors, will enrich a strolling danseuse, and 
rain down upon the stage a stream of golden boxes, or golden coin,, 
wreaths and rosy billet-doux. 



256 LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 

race whose instinct is destruction, who live 
to corrupt, and live off of the corruption 
which they make. For their support, we 
sacrifice annual hecatombs of youthful vic- 
tims. Even sober Christian men, look 
smilingly upon the gairish outside of these 
train-bands of destruction ; and while we 
see the results to be, uniformly, dissipation, 
idleness, dishonesty, vice and crime, still 
they lull us with the lying lyric of "classic 
drama" and u human life" " morality" 
"poetry" and "divine comedy!' 

Disguise it as you will, these men of 
pleasure are, the world over, corrupters of 
youth. Upon no principle of kindness can 
we tolerate them ; no excuse is bold 
enough ; we can take bail from none of their 
weaknesses — it is not safe to have them 
abroad even upon excessive bail. You 
might as well take bail of lions, and allow 
scorpions to breed in our streets for a suit- 
able license ; or for a tax indulge assassins. 
Men whose life is given to evil pleasures are, 
to ordinary criminals, what a universal pesti- 
lence is to a local disease. They fill the air, 
pervade the community, and bring around 
every youth an atmosphere of death. Cor- 
rupters of youth have no mitigation of their 
baseness. Their generosity avails nothing, 
their knowledge nothing, their varied ac- 
complishments nothing. These are only so 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS 



257 



many facilities for greater evil. Is a serpent 
less deadly, because his burnished scales 
shine ? Shall a dove praise and court the 
vulture, because he has such glossy plu- 
mage ? The more accomplishments a bad 
man has, the more dangerous is he ; — they 
are the garlands which cover up the knife 
with which he will stab. There is no such 
a thing as good corrupters. You might as 
well talk of a mild and pleasant murder, a 
very lenient assassination, a grateful stench, 
or a pious devil. We denounce them ; for 
it is our nature to loathe perfidious cor- 
ruption. We have no compunction to with- 
hold us. We mourn over a torn and bleed- 
ing lamb ; but who mourns the wolf which 
rent it ? We weep for despoiled innocence ; 
but who sheds a tear for the savage fiend who 
plucks away the flower of virtue ? We 
shudder and pray for the shrieking victim 
of the Inquisition ; but who would spare the 
hoary Inquisitor, before whose shriveled 
form the piteous maid implores relie&n vain? 
Even thus, we palliate the sins of generous 
youth ; and their downfall is our sorrow : 
but for their destroyers, for the corrupters 
of youth, who practise the infernal chemis- 
try of ruin, and dissolve the young heart in 
vice — we have neither tears, nor pleas, nor 
patience. We lift our heart to Him who 
beareth the iron rod of vengeance, and pray 
17 



258 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN 



for the appointed time of judgment. Ye 
miscreants ! think ye that ye are growing 
tall, and walking safely, because God hath 
forgotten ? The bolt shall yet smite you ! 
you shall be heard as the falling of an oak in 
the silent forest — the vaster its growth, the 
more terrible its resounding downfall ! Oh ! 

thou CORRUPTER OF YOUTH ! I would not 

take thy death, for all the pleasure of thy 
guilty life, a thousand fold. Thou shalt 
draw near to the shadow of death. To the 
Christian, these shades are the golden haze 
which heaven's light makes, when it meets 
the earth and mingles with its shadows. 
But to thee, these shall be shadows full of 
phantom-shapes. Images of terror in the 
Future shall dimly rise and beckon ; — the 
ghastly deeds of the Past shall stretch out 
their skinny hands to push thee forward ! 
Thou shalt not die unattended. Despair 
shall mock thee. Agony shall tender to 
thy parched lips her fiery cup. Remorse 
shall feel for thy heart, and rend it open. 
Good men shall breathe freer at thy death, 
and utter thanksgiving when thou art gone. 
Men shall place thy grave-stone as a monu- 
ment and testimony that a plague is stayed ; 
no tear shall wet it, no mourner linger 
there ! And, as borne on the blast thy 
guilty spirit whistles toward the gate of hell, 
the hideous shrieks of those whom thy 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS 



259 



hand hath destroyed, shall pierce thee — 
hell's first welcome. In the bosom of that 
everlasting storm which rains perpetual 
misery in hell, shalt thou, corrupter of 
youth ! be forever hidden from our view : 
and may God wipe out the very thoughts 
of thee from our memory. 



XEbe Bltemus library 

A choice collection of Standard and Popular books, 
handsomely printed on fine paper, from large clear type, 
and bound in handy volume size in faultless styles : 

1. Sesame and Lilies. Three lectures. By John 

Ruskin. 

I. Of King's Treasuries. 
II. Of Queen's Gardens. 
III. Of the Mystery of Life. 

2. The Pleasures of Life. By Sir John Lubbock, 

M. P., F. R. S., D. C. L., LL. D. Complete 
in one volume. 

3. The Essays of Lord Francis Bacon, with Memoirs 

and Notes. 

4. Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Anto- 

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5. A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus with 

the Encheridion. Translated by George Long. 

6. Essays, First Series. By Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

7. Essays, Second Series. By Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

8. Cranford. By Mrs. Gaskell. 

9. Of the Imitation of Christ. Four books com* 

plete in one volume. By Thomas A Kempis. 

10. The Vicar of Wakefield. By Oliver Goldsmith. 

xi. Letters, Sentences and Maxims. By Lord Ches- 
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writing, and good sense." 

X2. The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow. By Jerome 
K. Jerome. A book for an Idle Holiday. 

13. Tales from Shakespeare. By Charles and Mary 
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Ainger, M. A. 

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14. Natural Law in the Spiritual World. By Henry 

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15. Addresses. By Henry Drummond, F. R. S. E., 

F. G. S. The Greatest Thing in the World ; 
PaxVobiscum; The Changed Life; How to 
Learn How; Dealing with Doubt; Prepara- 
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Study of the Bible; A Talk on Books. 

16. "My Point of View." Representative selections 

from the works of Professor Drummond. By 
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1 7. The Scarlet Letter. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. 

18. Representative Men. Seven lectures. By Ralph 

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1 9. My King and His Service. By Frances Ridley 

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20. Reveries of a Bachelor. By Ik Marvel. A Book 

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21. The House of the Seven Gables. By Nathaniel 

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22. Dream Life. By Ik Marvel. A Companion 

volume to Reveries of a Bachelor. 

23. Rab and His Friends, Marjorie Fleming, etc. 

By John Brown. 

24. Essays of Elia. By Charles Lamb. 

25. Sartor Resartus. By Thomas Carlyle. 

26. Heroes and Hero Worship. By Thomas Carlyle. 

(350) 



tTbe Bltemus Xf&rarg* 

27. Ethics of the Dust. By John Ruskin. 

28. A Window in Thrums. By J. M. Barrie. 

29. Mosses from an Old Manse. By Nathaniel 

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30. Twice-Told Tales. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. 

31. Uncle Tom's Cabin. By Harriet Beecher Stowe. 

32. The Sketch Book. By Washington Irving. 

Cloth, various handsome designs stamped in gold and 
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HENRY ALTEMUS, Publisher, Philadelphia. 
(350 



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